


In Your Dreams, Show No Mercy

by Kansas42



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: ADHD, Angst and Humor, Door Imagery, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamsharing, Dreamwalking, Gen, Magical Necklace, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Nogitsune Trauma, Panic Attacks, Stilinski Family Feels, post 3b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-05 09:37:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1813813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kansas42/pseuds/Kansas42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek is missing, and Stiles might be the only one who can find him. In dreams. He is literally trying to find the man of his dreams. </p>
<p>Everything about this is terrible. Everything about EVERYTHING is terrible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. AWOL

**Author's Note:**

> I know I’m not the only one who thought ‘Stiles = Dreamwalker = Saves Derek = Awesome’ after “The Divine Move,” but hopefully people will like this fic, anyway. Also, the title comes from the song “Bad Days” by The Flaming Lips.

The door is ajar. 

Stiles pushes it open, ready to fall on his bed and collapse for six years --only it’s not his bed. It’s actually Scott’s bed, which makes sense because he’s in Scott’s room. It’s weird, though -- wasn’t he home just a minute ago? Has his bedroom door always led to Scott’s house?

It doesn’t matter. Scott’s bed is comfortable, and he won’t mind if Stiles crashes here. All he needs is his pillow, and -- oh good, here it is, under his arm. Right, so he’s just gonna --

Stop. Because the room isn’t empty, cause Scott’s sitting on the floor, playing video games with someone. Someone turns, and it’s -- _HOLY_ \--

It’s Stiles. It’s another Stiles, Shadow Stiles, _Nogitsune_ \--

Scott jumps up, dropping his controller, and backs straight into a wall. He doesn’t look anything like a True Alpha right now. He looks like he’s about to have the mother of all asthma attacks, like someone who knows what the business end of a sword feels like, and isn’t particularly interested in repeating the experience.

“Wait,” he says. “You’re -- which -- “

“I’m me,” Other Stiles immediately lies -- but is he lying? How can Stiles be so sure? How does he even know what’s real anymore, if he’s real anymore, if anything’s real? How can Stiles be sure he’s even awake right now?

He looks at his fingers, counts. 

1-2-3-4-5-6.

Six. Six. There are six fingers on his left hand.

“It’s okay,” Stiles says, more to himself than to Scott. Scott doesn’t matter because he’s not real. None of it matters. Stiles is asleep, and that’s okay, for once. It’s good that he’s dreaming. He isn’t crazy. The Nogitsune hasn’t returned. Everything is going to be okay --

Other Stiles takes his sword -- when did he get a sword -- and thrusts it through Scott’s stomach.

“ _Scott_!” Stiles screams as Scott staggers against the wall. Other Stiles turns to look at him, and suddenly Stiles can’t move. Old, dirty bandages bind his legs together, wrap around his torso, cover his arms. They go round and round his mouth. He can’t speak. He can’t breathe.

“You’re not real,” Other Stiles says, and goes back to torturing Scott.

Stiles tries to scream. Cloth wraps around his eyes. Everything is dark.

#

Stiles doesn’t wake up screaming, and he’s kind of absurdly proud of that. Of course, he’s also bitten through his lower lip while sleeping, and there’s blood all over his chin. So, it’s kind of a mixed win.

He counts his fingers, then counts them again, and tries to go back to sleep. He can’t, which, no surprise there -- his dreams have been particularly freaky of late, ever since a psychotic fox spirit invaded his mind. Nightmares were kind of inevitable, given the givens, and yet . . .

“No,” Stiles says. “No _and yet_. And nothing. And that’s the end of it, Stiles. You’re gonna have creepy dreams, and they’re gonna suck ass, and then you’re gonna get over it. They’re just dreams. They don’t mean ANYTHING.”

He counts his fingers again.

Godammit.

#

He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in . . . he doesn’t even know how long, but he thinks his friends are tired of calling him on it. Not like anyone’s been sleeping particularly great lately, not since Allison died. (And Aiden died. And Ethan left. And Isaac left. And Chris Argent left. And -- Jesus, who’s still around to get killed off, anyway? Because Stiles doesn’t doubt it, that more people will die or take off for good. He figures his own likelihood of surviving high school is somewhere around seven to eight percent.)

But yeah. He’s not the only one who looks like crap come Monday morning. Scott, in particular, looks like someone punched him in both eyes.

“You haven’t talked to Derek, have you?” Scott asks at lunch, like Stiles are Derek are buds, like Stiles totally hears from the werewolf all the time, like they play freaking _Mario Kart_ together over the weekends. “I haven’t been able to get a hold of him for days.”

“Something going on?” Stiles asks, because last he checked, Derek and Scott didn’t exactly play Mario Kart together, either. Or maybe that’s changed too, since Stiles got fox-possessed. A lot of things have. Derek apparently rode back into town minus a younger, prickly sister but with a new, improved outlook on life, happy to teach his young, padawan Alpha all about smelling emotions -- or whatever bullshit mystical powers he has that he’s never bothered to mention before. Not that it bothers Stiles. Not that he’s jealous. Because, sure, maybe Stiles thought they proved Derek was a terrible teacher pretty definitively last year, and okay, maybe Stiles isn’t used to Scott going to other people for help, because it’s always been him, it’s always been HIS job, that’s kind of Stiles’s whole shtick, sarcastic one-liners and Figuring Shit Out -- but none of that means he’s jealous, because that would be ridiculous. So. Not jealous. Nope. Not even a little.

And anyway, if Scott maybe _doesn’t_ want to seek advice from the guy who literally twisted a sword through his guts . . . it’s not like Stiles can really fault his logic, right? Surely, he can’t be hurt about that?

Doesn’t matter. Not the question. Focus, Stiles, focus. The REAL question: has another new menace already arisen to terrify, maim, and slaughter more Beacon Hills residents?

“No, not exactly,” Scott says, frowning -- which means, yes, yes, exactly. “But it doesn’t sound like anyone’s heard from him, and he hasn’t gotten back to me.”

“Dude’s not exactly known for his social skills,” Stiles reminds him. “Maybe he forgot. Or maybe he went on a road trip or something.” Because Derek _does_ do that, spontaneously disappear when shit gets rough, and things have been pretty rough for him for about, oh, a gazillion years now. Stiles doubts that Allison’s death hit him particularly hard -- not that Derek _wanted_ her to die, just, they weren’t exactly friends or anything -- but Isaac leaving must have taken a toll. Three wolves Derek made, all gone now. Some much more permanently than others.

The Werewolf Angst Road Trip is a perfectly rational explanation, and Stiles likes it -- because the only other one he has isn’t rational at all. But he isn’t going to think about that. _Get your head together, Stiles. The thing in the locker room, that was just a DREAM, okay_?

“Yeah,” Scott says, still frowning and clearly not listening even a little. “I think we should check on him after school.”

Scott’s going to do it whether Stiles agrees or not, so Stiles just sighs. 

“Fine,” he says. “Fine. But if Derek’s just home, marathoning Orange is the New Black, you’re gonna feel awfully silly.”

#

Derek isn’t marathoning Orange is the New Black, or any other show for that matter. Derek isn’t home, probably because he’s been kidnapped or dead, if the state of his apartment is anything to go by. Furniture is overturned. There are bullet holes in the wall. Blood spatter, too, not to mention the seriously disturbing amount of dried blood in the middle of the room. 

Stiles steps around it, carefully, and examines the spatter. He’s not a forensics expert, obviously, but access to the internet, a lot of sleepless nights, and a Sheriff for a father has taught him a few things. Probable victim: Derek. Probability of survival: 50%, but only because Derek isn’t actually human. Probable weapon used: shotgun, just like the one Kate had, the one -- the one --

The one Derek had told Stiles about. In the locker room. 

In the dream.

_It hadn’t been a dream_.

Stiles sits down, hard, on the floor. He doesn’t have a panic attack, exactly, but it’s close, squeezing his fists open and close, open and close, as he stares at Derek’s old blood and does his best not to hyperventilate. Scott crouches down in front of him, anxious and confused. “Stiles, are you okay? What’s going on, dude, talk to me.”

“I’m okay,” Stiles says, which isn’t even close to being true. “I’m okay. I’m okay. I dreamed this, but I’m -- I’m -- ”

_How does he even know what’s real anymore_?

Stiles counts his fingers, and he doesn’t even try to be subtle about it. Ten. Do it again, make sure. Ten. Again. Ten. Ten. Ten --

Scott takes his hands gently, squeezes.

Stiles takes a deep breath. “I dreamed this,” he says, forcing himself to look at Scott. “Well, not this, exactly.” He pulls away, waving one hand wildly at the general destruction around them. “But I dreamed I was talking to Derek in the locker room, and he -- he told me Kate was still alive, or came back to life, or something. He told me she ambushed him here at the loft. That she shot him. I don’t even know how that’s possible, but -- no, it isn’t, it ISN’T possible. We were in the locker room, and he realized, I mean, _I_ realized that _I_ was dreaming, and . . . that’s it. I woke up, and that’s it. This is just, it’s, it’s freaky coincidence, that’s all. My dreams are creepy, sure, and dude, they have SUCKED lately, but they don’t mean anything, they can’t, they aren’t fucking _prophetic_.”

Stiles sucks in another breath, aware that Scott is looking at him kind of strangely, eyebrows knitted together, frowning. It’s his Putting Things Together face. Same face he wore when he watched the end of The Sixth Sense, or when he finally managed to connect ‘screaming infant’ with ‘byproduct of sex.’ “When did you dream about Derek?” Scott asks.

Stiles shrugs. “Couple of nights ago.”

“And what did you dream last night?”

Stiles looks away.

“Dude.” Scott takes one of Stiles’s hands back, holds it. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not, though. It isn’t. I don’t . . .”

Stiles shakes his head, can’t say it, doesn’t even want to think it. 

_I stabbed you again, Scotty. I watched myself stab you_.

“I dreamt we were playing video games,” Scott says, and Stiles turns back so fast he probably gets whiplash. “Or I thought we were, but then you came through the door, and then -- ”

“And then I stabbed you,” Stiles whispers.

“The Nogitsune stabbed me,” Scott says patiently. “You were by the door, right? You had your pillow.”

“Can’t sleep without it,” Stiles says and laughs bitterly, shaking with it. “Jesus Christ, Scott. What the hell is happening to me _now_?”

Scott wraps one arm around him. “We’ll figure it out,” he says.


	2. Bleed-Through

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this is definitely an AU now as of the Season Four premiere. (And wow, did I not see that twist coming.)

Deaton listens to everything they have to say. Nods. 

“Interesting,” he says.

Stiles’s hands kind of spasm, so he carefully puts them behind his back before he can _choke Deaton to death_. “You -- I don’t think INTERESTING is the word I’d choose. Petrifying, maybe. Ominous. Deleterious, I got that one from my SAT prep. Ooh, what about -- “

Scott puts a hand on his shoulder. “Stiles.”

Stiles exhales. “Vocabulary aside, what I’m actually interested in is why this is happening to me and _how do I make it stop_?”

“It’s happening,” Deaton says calmly, “because you opened a door inside your mind, and a nogitsune went through it. There are often consequences when something else wears your skin, things that can be . . . shared . . . between intruder and host.”

Stiles feels a little sick. Actually, he feels a lot sick, and he more falls than sits in the chair behind him. “If you’re telling me I can possess people, or I’m gonna start killing everybody -- “

“No,” Scott says, kneeling beside him. “You’re going to be fine, Stiles, that’s not what he’s saying.” And then he turns and actually Alpha Eyes Deaton, _Deaton_ , of all people. “That’s not what you’re saying, right.” It’s not really a question.

If Stiles didn’t feel so shitty right now, he might actually hug the guy.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Deaton says, seemingly unfazed by Scott’s Alpha Eyes. (Which, Stiles admits grudgingly, is kind of hardcore. Glowing red eyes are sort of intimidating, even if they belong to your sweet puppy of a part-time employee OR best friend.) “There won’t be any personality bleed-through, and it’s unlikely that you’d be able to enter anybody’s minds while they’re conscious, much less control their actions.”

‘Unlikely’ isn’t the 110% ‘never’ that Stiles was hoping for, but he’s struggling to take what he can get. Anyway, Deaton’s still talking. “The Nogitsune might have slipped inside so easily because the door was already open, but tricksters, they rarely just wait for an invitation like that. Tricksters expose hidden vulnerabilities. They have multiple methods of conning their way past locked doors. 

“Now, what I believe is happening with you, Stiles, is that you’ve developed some of the Nogitsune’s ability to slide around or through these doors. And though you’re doing this unintentionally, I believe that, as you learn to control this ability, you’ll be able to locate specific people’s minds at will and interact with them in their dreams.”

“But not control them?” Stiles asks, crossing his arms tightly around his chest and hating himself just a little. He would be a lot more useful to the pack as a telepathic puppet-master than as a snarky amateur detective -- hell, he could get into the heads of all the assholes always coming to kill them and make them just GO AWAY -- but he can’t, he can’t do that, he can’t _be_ that thing.

“No,” Deaton says. His voice is a little too kind, and Stiles turns away from it. “You won’t be able to hurt anyone the way you were hurt.”

“Cool,” Stiles says, still not looking up. “But, you know, I think I’d rather just get rid of the whole thing entirely. So. How do I go about doing that?”

“You probably can’t.”

Stiles does look up then, and Deaton spreads his hands like some kind of serene monk. “Consequences,” he says, “are rarely temporary.”

Stiles grins, tightly, and carefully places his hands behind his back again.

“That’s great. No, really, you should stitch that into a pillow or something. It’d make an _awesome_ baby shower gift.”

#

Deaton gives him a couple of books, a few useless proverbs, and a silver pendant with a poppy engraved into it. It’s apparently a sign of Morpheus -- the Greek God of Dreams and NOT Laurence Fishburne. Unfortunately.

“Wear this when you sleep,” Deaton says, “and it will help the lucidity of your dreams.”

“So, all my nightmares will felt completely real again,” Stiles says, nodding. “Yeah, see, that’s something I’ve actively trying to avoid these days.”

Deaton shrugs. “It’s your choice,” he says. “Actually, it’s not a good idea to wear it every night. Your mind needs rest as much as your body does, and the more lucid your dreams, the less rest you’ll manage to get.”

“Great,” Stiles says. “So why wear it at all?”

“Because you _are_ going to dreamwalk, Stiles. That’s not something you can change, but you _can_ learn to control it instead of letting it control you. Right now, you’re being drawn to people at random, likely people you know or people with supernatural abilities and auras. Without the pendant, you won’t have any power to decide whose mind you enter, but with it, you can learn how to avoid the minds you don’t want to see, or even seek out the ones who might need your help.”

Deaton isn’t nearly as subtle as he thinks he is. “You mean Derek,” Stiles says, and holds back a shudder at the idea of entering the werewolf’s mind. He doesn’t even want to know what Derek dreams about. Ripping out the throats of hyperactive young teenagers with his teeth, probably. Maybe psychotic women, too. Or fire. Nothing that Stiles has any particular interest in seeing, like, not even a tiny bit. 

But.

“You think I can find him?”

“I think you have a lot more power than you realize,” Deaton says.

He probably means it to be reassuring. It’s not.

#

Stiles goes home, alone. Dad’s still on duty, and Scott can’t stay, although he goes through a twenty minute guilt fest about it in the jeep before Stiles finally pushes his werewolf ass out the door. (Parked, obviously. Stiles doesn’t just push him out while he’s still driving. Not that Scott couldn’t survive that, probably, but that’s not really a good enough reason to do it, even if Scott’s reassurances that everything will turn out okay is starting, irrationally, to grate on his nerves. Who really believes that things are going to turn out okay? When have things _ever_ been really okay? Before he was nine? Maybe?)

Stiles, in a fit of anxiety and restlessness, attempts to make something healthy for dinner that might be just a LITTLE outside his abilities as a chef. Dad comes home briefly for a thirty-minute break -- he’s been doing that a lot, lately -- and raises an eyebrow at the state of the kitchen.

“How was _your_ day?” Dad asks, sighing as he slumps into a chair. He looks tired. He’s looked tired for months, since he found out all about the werewolves and kanimas and nogitsunes. He looks . . . old. 

“Oh, you know,” Stiles says, shrugging. “Nothing special.”

#

Stiles thinks about going to bed that night, he really does. He holds the pendant in his hand and stares at it like it might start to glow or do something else really cool. It doesn’t, and Stiles puts it away, impulsively deciding to just stay awake and play on his computer all night instead. Sleep and Stiles have never really been pals, anyway, and yeah, he’s going to regret this decision at school tomorrow when he’s expected to be conscious during class, but this . . . all this dream shit, it’s too much. It’s just too much, he can’t; he can’t DEAL with it right now.

Unfortunately, his body has other plans because he collapses over his keyboard around two in the morning and finds himself in Scott’s bedroom again, only Scott’s not sitting around playing video games this time. No, this time he and Kira are both quite naked, and they are making noises that Stiles has only heard in internet porn and possibly one or two nature documentaries.

“Oh, GOD,” Stiles says and runs.

He wakes, flailing, and promptly falls out of his chair. As soon as he picks himself back up from the carpet, Stiles grabs his phone and texts Scott. _Dude, my EYES. There are things I don’t need to see, EVER_.

To which Scott texts back _?_ and follows it up with _Jst got home. 0 luck w Derek. Dream sumthin bad?_

“Oh,” Stiles says, and carefully sets his phone down without replying. Scott can be remarkably laid back about all kinds of things, but Stiles doesn’t think that peeping in on his girlfriend’s sex dream, even accidentally, is going to be one of them. Also, he’s probably going to need to apologize to Kira tomorrow. Awesome. There’s no way that will be awkward at all.

He looks longingly at his computer, wanting nothing more than to stay awake until dawn and read article after article on Wikipedia -- but Derek’s still out there, somewhere, and Scott and Malia can’t track his scent. He should—crap, he should at least TRY to find the gloomy sourwolf, if only to make sure he keeps his lead in the Saving My Most Obnoxious Ally competition that he and Derek have been playing since last year.

Stiles puts on the necklace and lays in bed, trying to clear his mind, trying to only think of Derek.

“I’m just trying to find the man of my dreams,” Stiles says, and then promptly tries to suffocate himself with a pillow.

#

Suffocating himself doesn’t work and, eventually, he falls asleep. When he opens his eyes again, Stiles appears to be in the hallway from _The Shining_. Perfect. That’s just perfect. He is totally going to die tonight.

He never asked Deaton what would happen if he died in a dream. Clearly, this was an oversight, a massive, horrific oversight. Stiles is going to die, and he’s going to _deserve_ it.

He looks around. The carpet and wallpaper are the same, but the hallway isn’t an exact replica of the Overlook. For one, there doesn’t appear to be an end to it, not in either direction. Moreover, the hallway is lined with multiple doors, and the doors are . . . weird.

A door to his left is heavy steel, the kind of door you might see in a bank vault. The one next to it looks like any other motel room door, except that there are about fifty peepholes instead of just one. And across from THAT door is one that’s only three feet high and also bright blue.

Everything about this place is incredibly fucked up.

Stiles counts his fingers and is actually relieved to see twelve. Good, he’s dreaming. That’s good. He wanted to dream, so he could . . . so he could . . . why did he want to dream again?

He wanted to find somebody. It’s important that he finds somebody.

Stiles is wearing different clothes than he fell asleep in -- basically, he appears to be in an adult-sized Danny Torrance costume, sans trike -- but the pendant still hangs around his neck. He grips the charm between two fingers and thinks, _Derek. I have to find Derek_.

Stiles isn’t an idiot. He can understand basic symbolism. Each door leads to a different mind, ergo, one of these doors leads to Derek. He just has to find the right one out of an infinite number. Needle, meet pile of needles. Lovely.

If two little twin girls pop up and ask him to play, though, he is RUNNING and leaving Derek for dead. Screw courage.

#

There all kinds of interesting doors, but the first one that he’s drawn to, the first one that calls his name, is a large black door that’s ominously shaped liked a coffin. And any inanimate object that’s whispering _Stiles_ \-- but ESPECIALLY one that looks like a coffin -- is probably something to be avoided. Stiles touches the doorknob anyway, helpless to shake the feeling that this door is familiar, that he knows who’s behind it, that it’s somewhere he needs to go. After all, it could lead to Derek. It seems like the kind of cheerful barrier the werewolf’s subconscious would choose.

Stiles takes a deep breath and turns the knob.

It doesn’t open.

Figures. Stiles lets go and steps back, but doesn’t turn away. He can’t -- there’s something here, he knows it, and he is _going_ to figure it out. Deaton said a trickster wouldn’t just wait for an open door, and Stiles, he isn’t the Nogitsune anymore, but he’s -- he’s something.

He’s really something now.

“Hello?” Stiles says. “Anyone inside? I’ve come to bring you the Word of Our Lord Savior, Jesus Christ.”

He lifts his hand, knocks on the door . . . and his fingers slide right through the wood.

Stiles pulls his hand back quickly. All his fingers are still attached, and they aren’t bloody or blistered or anything. His hand _is_ trembling, but hey, so is the rest of him. So no cause for concern there.

He lifts both his hands to the door. They meet no resistance at all.

“This is SUCH a bad idea,” Stiles says, and walks through.

#

He’s not in Derek’s head. He figures that out pretty quickly when he ends up on the lacrosse field and sees Lydia sitting on the ground, Lydia in her beautiful, bloody, ripped apart dress.

“Lydia!” Stiles screams, running for her. “Lydia, ru -- “

But she doesn’t need to run. Peter attacked her a long time ago now, and none of this is real anyway. Stiles knows that, he does, it’s just . . . easy to forget, somehow, in here.

He clenches the pendant in his fingers, centering himself, and then walks the rest of the way over. Lydia seems unperturbed by his dramatic entrance and, in fact, has already gone back to playing some weird card game.

“Hey, Lyds,” Stiles says, sitting down beside her. “Whatcha doing?”

Lydia stares at him. “Tarot,” she says, as if that’s perfectly obvious, like the card she’s currently holding doesn’t have a duck on it. Admittedly, Stiles doesn’t know a _lot_ about Tarot, but he’s reasonably sure that the Duck is not one of the Major or Minor Arcana. “You want a reading, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he says immediately because he totally does want a Weird Duck Tarot Reading -- but that’s not why he’s here. Dammit. “Actually, I’m trying to find Derek. I -- “

“I know,” Lydia says, touching his hand gently. “I was trying to find Allison, but the cards won’t let me look that far.” She places another card on the ground, and Stiles swallows at the picture of Allison smiling up at him.

There’s something in French written above her head, but Stiles doesn’t know what it means. Lydia traces it with her fingers, eyes wet. Stiles can’t stand it, being an intruder on her grief.

“Lydia,” he says. “You’re dreaming. None of this is real, well, I’m real, but THIS, this isn’t -- ”

“You think that all the time, don’t you? That you’re dreaming.”

Stiles opens his mouth and just sort of . . . stalls out. He can’t even _begin_ to know how to respond to that question right now.

Lydia nods, like that’s answer enough, and starts shuffling the deck again. She lays the cards facedown in a strange pattern that looks vaguely familiar, though he doesn’t think it’s an actual Tarot pattern. He doubts Lydia knows Tarot anymore than he does. The cards wind down, almost twisting, like . . .

Like the roots of the Nemeton.

“Stop,” Stiles whispers.

Lydia raises a cool eyebrow and then completely ignores him, like usual. “This is Derek’s card,” she says, and flips over one near the top. It is, unimaginatively, a picture of a wolf. “And this is your card. Hardly surprising.”

Red fur, bloody paws, and an upside-down Cheshire grin. “The Fox, reversed,” Stiles says, and turns away, gripping his pendant tight. “Lydia -- ”

“This is where you’ll find him,” Lydia says, and Stiles turns back --

\-- but there’s a strange beeping sound, coming from the sky, louder and louder and LOUDER --

Stiles wakes up.


	3. Overwhelm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will firmly remain an AU for Season 4, but I may pull a few things from new episodes if something strikes me right. Also, this chapter may have gotten a TINY bit angsty. I'm not sorry at all.

Scott tells the others about Derek at lunch the next day. He also tells them about Stiles’s dreams. Stiles, himself, mostly keeps his head down while Scott talks, not particularly jazzed about meeting anyone’s eyes right now, and also preoccupied by viciously stabbing his lukewarm tater tots into lukewarm mush. He’s arbitrarily decided that the tater tots are the cause of all his problems, and he’s a lot more interested in seeing them suffer than he is in actually eating them. He fondly remembers when lunch was just lunch, when it wasn’t, like, Pack Meeting Lunch, and when he had conversations with Scott about homework and girls and maybe someday actually getting to play lacrosse instead of just warming the bench.

Now all his conversations are about werewolves and hallucinations and dead people, and Stiles has to say, he’s getting a little tired of the dead people. Also, the still living keep giving him weird looks, which has pretty much happened ever since Stiles learned how to talk, but certainly happens a whole lot _more_ now that all his lunchtime conversations are about crazy shit that isn’t supposed to exist. And it’s not that he doesn’t _try_ to use his inside voice -- like he definitely wants to keep the whole werewolf thing on the big DL --but, well. Stiles is an excitable person. He likes to project. Mrs. Henderson even tried to recruit him for drama once, before deciding his “attention issues” might be too overwhelming to deal with.

That kind of thing happens to Stiles a lot. He is, and always has been, too much for most people to handle.

_She’s pretty tired right now, kiddo. Let’s go out to the waiting room -- you don’t want to overwhelm her, do you_?

Stiles shakes the thought away and goes back to ignoring everybody while he mercilessly stabs his food. He ignores the way Malia is looking at him, and the way Kira is studiously _not_ looking at him. He doesn’t want to think about the dreams. He doesn’t really want to think about anything. Whatever weird fit of cautious optimism he experienced last night, whatever delusional belief he briefly harbored that he might actually be useful for half a second? Yeah, that’s gone now. Derek is missing, and Stiles is _tired_ , and all he really want to do is sleep for a thousand years, sleep and never dream. This isn’t something Stiles can use to do good. It’s just something else wrong with him. Something else that needs to be dealt with, managed.

Stiles is tired of being managed.

Someone kicks him under the table. Stiles glances up and meets Lydia’s unrepentant eyes.

“Your food is already dead, Stiles,” she says. “Stop trying to murder it.” She looks back over to Scott. “What do we do about Derek?”

Scott frowns. “We keep looking,” he says after a minute, and resolutely, like, he gives an actual decisive nod and everything. God bless Scott -- he takes being a leader super seriously. For him, determination and hope in the face of all odds is simply a part of the Alpha job description.

“We’re not going to find him,” Malia says.

Malia, on the other hand, isn’t as invested in being an inspirational werewolf leader. (Or werecoyote leader. Whatever.)

Scott shakes his head. “Maybe not, but we have to keep trying.”

“But we’re not going to find him,” Malia says. “The trail’s gone cold.”

Stiles nudges her. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “This is sorta one of those whole human hope things? Remember how we talked about that?”

She stares at him, clearly unimpressed with the whole idea of human hope. At the moment, he can’t entirely fault her logic.

“I’ll do some research on Kate,” Stiles offers, mostly so Scott doesn’t feel obligated to give a moving speech about faith or never giving up or something. “Like, try to figure out how she’s even still ALIVE.”

“Good,” Scott says. “And -- ”

“No," Lydia says, “I’ll do that.” She turns to Stiles. “You need to focus on your dreamwalking.”

He stares at her. “Focusing isn’t really my strong suit,” Stiles says. “And anyway, I really think Derek takes priority over whatever’s currently wrong with my brain, don’t you?” That sounds suspiciously like Stiles cares about Derek, so he quickly adds, “Not that I care about Derek, obviously. Just, if he dies, who will be our Group Brooder? Cause we have to have one, guys, it’s basically written in stone. I think -- ”

“Do you even listen to your own babble?” Lydia asks.

Stiles shrugs. “Not really, no.”

“You need to figure out how to direct your dreaming,” Lydia explains, not at all patiently, “so you can find Derek instead of playing Tarot on the lacrosse field with me.”

Kira glances at the others. “Is that a . . . euphemism for something?”

Malia shrugs.

“It’s really, really not,” Stiles says, avoiding Lydia’s eyes. “I wasn’t sure you remembered.”

Lydia all but sniffs. “I can put two and two together, Stiles,” she says. “Faster than everyone else here, I might add.”

“Well, awesome,” Stiles says, sarcastically as he knows how. “I’m sure if I just try _really hard_ , I’ll be able to figure this out in no time.”

“Stiles,” Scott says, but Stiles ignores him.

“You don’t know, Lydia,” he snaps. “You have no idea, I mean, the sheer number of doors that are there, it’s . . . it’s impossible. It’s infinite. I might never -- ”

“You’re our best chance,” Lydia says, and Stiles stops, because he’s never been anyone’s best anything before.

“She’s right,” Scott says. “And Malia is, too.” Malia blinks, clearly surprised that anyone other than Stiles has agreed with her on anything. “I’m not going to stop trying to track Derek, but the trail _has_ gone cold. Lydia can’t do anything until Derek’s close to death. Maybe if Chris Argent was here . . .” He takes a breath. “But he’s not, and I can’t get ahold of him. You’re our best chance. If you can connect with Derek, somehow, see if he can give you a clue where Kate’s keeping him . . . maybe we can get to him _before_ Lydia has one of her feelings.”

Everyone is looking at him. Stiles shakes his head hopelessly. “You guys, I don’t . . . I don’t have any idea what I’m doing.”

Lydia kicks him again, a little more gently this time.

“You’ll figure it out,” she says. “You always do.”

#

When the bell rings, Stiles looks at Kira and tries to say _hey, can we talk somewhere far, far, FAR away from my best friend and your boyfriend so that he doesn’t rip me apart with his super sharp claws for accidentally seeing your sex dream_ with just his eyes. He’s well aware that this attempted psychic message probably just looks like Stiles bugging his eyes out like a crazy person, but barring any post-Nogitsune telepathy, which -- oh GOD, let that never be a thing -- his options are kind of limited.

Kira seems to get the message anyway because she kisses Scott and tells him that she’ll catch up, that she forgot something at her locker. Stiles follows her and waits until Scott is well out of Werewolf Hearing Range before saying, “You know werewolves can sense lies, right?”

Kira opens her locker and pulls out The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy -- which, okay, that’s only like his favorite book of all time, like, he might consider MARRYING this girl if she wasn’t already dating his best friend in the whole world -- and says, “That’s why I didn’t lie. Look -- “

“No,” Stiles says. “Let me -- I just -- ” He tugs nervously at his hair. “I’m sorry about, you know, last night. I didn’t mean -- ”

“I know,” Kira says. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Stiles says, looking down at his feet. “I know it’s not. Like, okay, privacy has always been kind of a difficult concept for me, and I don’t always, like, properly acknowledge boundaries and stuff, but I know -- it’s an invasion, what I’m doing, and you were, I mean, like there’s a whole violation aspect that I don’t even -- and I wouldn’t -- ”

“Stiles.” 

Kira reaches out to touch his shoulder, then pulls back, clearly second-guessing the gesture. Then she second-guesses the second-guessing and finally pats him a few times on the arm. It’s actually what he most likes about her, other than her awesome taste in books and her ability to make his best buddy smile: for being a sword-wielding, supernatural badness, Kira is so incredibly awkward sometimes. It’s kind of comforting, actually, not being the only nerd in the group.

“It’s really okay,” Kira says. She’s blushing a little, but her voice is steady. “I mean, yeah, it’s embarrassing, but it’s not end of the world embarrassing, like my parents walking in on Scott and me actually DOING something embarrassing. I so wouldn't get over that.” She laughs, and he laughs too. “Anyway,” Kira adds. “I know you didn’t mean to.”

Stiles smile fades a little. “Yeah,” he says. “Well, I think that excuse is already starting to get a little old, you know?”

She frowns. “Stiles -- ”

“Anyway,” he says quickly, shuffling backwards. “I’ll try not to accidentally wander into your bedroom tonight. Er, Real OR Dream Bedroom, cause either would be pretty weird.”

“Hey.” Kira touches him on the shoulder, this time without all the awkward second-guessing. “You know no one blames you for what the Nogitsune did, right?”

Yes. He knows that. He also knows that guilt is guilt, even in the absence of blame.

He smiles at her, tightly. “We better get to class,” he says.

#

Stiles goes to bed early that night, wanting to get a jumpstart on the whole dreaming process -- because if he’s going to do this, then he’s going to do it, 110%, hyperfocus style. Except his mind is still totally wide awake and won’t shut the hell up, spiraling from one tangent to the next, until his whole brain is basically on fire. He even gets up and tries drinking a glass of _warm milk_ , for Christ’s sake. (It’s terrible, and it doesn’t help at all.)

Dad sits at the kitchen table, watching him over an almost comically high stack of police reports. He’s clearly trying to be subtle about it, but he’s failing pretty miserably -- dude’s, like, an amazing cop, but his worrying has been 100% NOT subtle since the whole Nogitsune thing.

Stiles can’t tell him about the dreams. He can’t; his Dad shouldn’t have to deal with the fact that there’s something _else_ wrong with his son. Dad deserves someone better, someone normal, a kid who doesn’t have the attention span of a goldfish. Dad deserves someone who didn’t drive his own mother --

“Stiles?”

Stiles blinks at his empty glass and glances up. Dad’s not even trying to be subtle now. “Everything okay?”

Stiles smiles weakly. “Sure,” he says. “Everything’s fine.”

#

It takes _hours_ for Stiles to fall asleep, and when he finally does, he finds himself in the hallway again. Or _some_ hallway, anyway -- because he’s definitely not walking through the Overlook this time. Actually, it looks like the main hall from school, only all the normal classroom doors have been replaced by the weird ones he saw before. Lydia’s creepy coffin door is missing, though, and he wonders if that might mean she’s awake. He’ll have to ask her what she was doing around four in the morning. Assuming it’s still four, of course. Time is weird here.

The first door that speaks to him is solid oak and looks like it could sustain an attack from a battering ram. There’s a lock but no handle, and when Stiles places his palms against the wood, nothing happens. Okay. Well, they couldn’t all be that easy. He wonders if there’s any significance to that, how easy it was to slide into Lydia’s mind. She was his anchor when he sacrificed himself to the Nemeton, but was she only his anchor for the night, or were there some other kind of lasting effects?

“Consequences,” Stiles mutters to himself, “are rarely temporary. Thanks for absolutely freaking nothing, Deaton.”

He concentrates on the lock again. He’s starting to wish he could carry other things into the dream with him besides his Morpheus necklace, like a lock picking kit or an axe or, ooh, maybe a stick or twelve of dynamite. He could just blow the shit out of all the doors. That would make everything a whole lot simpler.

Stiles glances at his eleven fingers.

“You’re dreaming,” Stiles reminds himself. “You can have whatever you need here, right? Like, Inception. Dream a little bigger, darling.” 

Stiles doesn’t think it’s a good idea for him to be messing around with dynamite, even if none of this is real. He's not to be trusted with explosives, certainly not these days. He _does_ briefly consider the fire axe, but only briefly. Somehow, he knows that any ‘here’s Johnny’ moment wouldn’t play out the way he wants it to. The doors are a puzzle, and the lock is the -- har, har -- the key. He has to get past the lock if he wants to look behind the door.

Stiles closes his eyes. “Okay. I’m standing here, totally holding a lock picking kit in my hands. I can feel it right now. Uh-huh. Right in my hands.”

He opens his eyes. His hands are empty. Dammit.

Stiles closes his eyes again. He tries to remember the kit Dad bought him when he was a kid, less because Dad thought it would be a good idea -- because he really, really hadn’t -- and more because Stiles wouldn’t shut up about getting one, and Mom, anyway, had thought the whole idea was funny as hell. Dad did a lot of grumbling, but he went ahead and bought it anyway, because he’d do just about anything to make Mom smile.

Stiles had lost the kit when he was eleven, but he still remembers how the tools had felt in his hands -- and when he opens his eyes again, there they are, solid and cold between his fingers. “Okay,” Stiles says and gets to work.

It takes Stiles an embarrassingly long time to pick the lock because he’s kind of out-of-practice (he usually just lets the werewolves _break_ the locks for him, these days) and also because, despite enthusiasm, he was never really all that GOOD at this. If there were any, like, Dream Police running around, Stiles would totally be busted.

But no such Dream Police arrive, and eventually Stiles gets the door open. He takes a breath and steps inside, hoping Derek will show his ugly -- okay, fine, his disgustingly attractive -- face at any moment, tell him where he is, and solve this whole thing once and for all.

Derek doesn’t appear because of course he doesn’t, because nothing is that easy, and because Stiles had known all along this door wouldn’t lead to him, or should have. He should have known exactly who he was going to find behind this door. He should have been prepared for this. He should have been --

\-- but he wasn’t. He wasn’t, and now he’s here, walking into his own house, and Dad’s sitting at the kitchen table, and Mom --

Mom’s here. Mom’s alive.

Her hands are tugging at her dark hair as she walks in circles around the kitchen table. “It was here,” she says. “I know it. I remember it. It was right _here_.”

“Claudia,” Dad says softly.

“No, don’t -- I know it, John, I’m not -- “

“Claudia, we’ve talked about this, remember? You can’t -- ”

“But it was here!” Mom’s crying, not prettily, not quietly. Her breath is hitching, she’s crying so hard. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.”

Stiles shakes his head. No. He can’t do this. He can’t see her like this again, not now, not after -- no. He can’t. He just can’t.

He takes a step back, and the floorboards creak under his weight, betraying him. Mom spins around and stares at him.

“Who’s that?”

There’s a small, choking sort of sound. It takes Stiles too long to realize it’s coming from his own throat. He continues to back up, even as his dad stands up from the table. “That’s our son,” Dad says, slowly, patiently, brokenly. “That’s Stiles. You remember -- ”

But Mom starts screaming. “That’s not my son. I know my own son, John, I know him, _you’re not him_!” She picks up a pitcher of water and throws it straight at Stiles. There’s time to dodge, or should be, but he freezes up, staring at her, and the pitcher smashes right across his chest, glass shattering apart, cutting into his shirt, his skin. Blood and water spill to the floor as he drops to his knees.

“Don’t wear his face!” Mom screams. “Stop wearing his face!”

Dad, horrified, gets between the two of them. Stiles turns away, tries to crawl for the door. He doesn’t see it -- where the hell is it? He needs out, he needs _out_. Dad’s calling his name, but Stiles ignores him, finally sees a door he can escape through. He reaches up, turning the handle with slippery, bloody fingers -- but it doesn’t lead back to the hallway, after all, just outside to the front porch, and that’s not far enough, not nearly far enough. He can still hear Mom screaming. He puts his hands over his ears.

“Let me out!” Stiles screams at the sky. “Let me _out_! Let me -- ”

He wakes himself up screaming. Apparently wakes his dad up, too, because Dad runs in with red eyes and obvious tear tracks and grabs Stiles from behind, holding him close.

“Hey hey hey,” Dad say. “You’re okay. It’s okay. Whatever it was, it was just a dream. You’re okay now. Everything’s okay.”

But Stiles isn't okay, and he can’t stop crying for a long, long time.


	4. Morgue

The whole week is basically one massive suckfest of failure. Every night, Stiles goes to sleep, and every night he ends up in the head of basically every person in Beacon Hills _other_ than Derek Hale. Stiles is half-convinced that Derek’s already dead, but Lydia tells him she’d know if he was.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, “but Lyds, your power is kind of, you know . . .”

“ _What_?”

Wonky, is what Stiles was going to say, before he realized that it’d be kind of a dick thing to bring up. Lydia isn’t in any more control of her abilities than Stiles is, and he clearly knows firsthand how frustrating that can be. “Nothing,” he says. “Never mind. I don’t even know what I was going to say. Nothing, nothing.”

Lydia lifts her chin. “He’s alive,” she says. “I know he’s alive.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Totally. Derek’s alive. It’s going to be -- “

Lydia turns on her heel and walks off. Stiles thinks about calling after her, but doesn’t. Sometimes, he doesn’t know exactly how he feels about Lydia. He thinks he’s always going to be in love with her, at least a little, but it’s different now, that they’re actually friends. Better, he thinks, but also stranger. They can both look at each other and see things that they don’t want others to see.

Stiles slumps against his locker. Personal growth is exhausting.

He supposes the whole week hasn’t entirely been a bust. Well, in coming any closer to finding Derek, yes. He has supremely and totally failed in that regard. But he’s also managed to pick up a _few_ valuable things along the way. Like the other night, he returned to Lydia’s mind, just to confirm a couple of things, make sure he can still easily slide through the door (he can) and that the same door always leads to her (it does). The placement of the doors will sometimes change, but not their appearance, at least, which is helpful. (Or will be, if Stiles ever actually FINDS Derek.)

It also seems like his hypothesis might have been correct: if someone’s door doesn’t show up in the hallway, then they aren’t actually asleep. It’s comforting, in a way -- Stiles can’t sneak into anyone’s mind while they’re awake, and if he’s sharing their dream, he wakes up as soon as they do, so there’s no way he can exert any kind of control over their conscious selves. It’s one thing for Deaton to say it, but it’s a whole other thing to confirm it for himself.

Other good news: nobody ever seems to recognize that Stiles doesn’t belong in their dreams, at least not fully. Sometimes they’re confused by his appearance, thrown briefly out of whatever weird ass narrative their subconscious has created, but then the narrative usually just adapts to include him, and if not, the person simply realizes they’re dreaming and wakes up. Which is especially awesome because Stiles? Really not equipped to deal with Inception level security. He’s getting better at creating objects when he needs them, but it often takes time, time he wouldn’t have if Dream Assassins were trying to murder him at any given opportunity. 

Even if they did, though, Stiles can't die in a dream -- or rather, his physical body won't die or slip into a coma or whatever other horrible thing usually happens when your mind dies elsewhere. Deaton was pretty clear on that, like, he was surprisingly not vague at all. Although it will apparently still _feel_ totally real, so. He's actively trying to avoid the whole getting ax-murdered thing.

Stiles still forgets where he is sometimes, gets caught up in the story before anchoring himself. Sometimes, his subconscious even changes the story, which inevitably sucks because his subconscious, apparently, totally hates him. Like in Scott’s dream, when the Nogitsune mummy-wrapped Stiles and said, “You’re not real.” He doesn’t think that part came from Scott. That’s his own nightmare Stiles brought into Scott’s head.

He doesn’t know who is to blame for Mom. Stiles tries not to think about it.

#

As predicted, Scott and Malia have no luck tracking Derek. No one can get ahold of Chris Argent, and good luck is apparently not to be had in Beacon Hills because Stiles -- who is apparently the pack’s best chance now, CHRIST -- is having more and more trouble falling asleep. 

To compensate, Stiles starts backing off his Adderall -- not flat-out stopping, just, just skipping a few pills here and there (and everywhere) -- and not only is his concentration at school for shit, his dad’s starting to give him the Eye again. Actually, Dad’s been doing that ever since the nightmare with Mom, which has only strengthened Stiles’s resolve to never, EVER tell Dad about his newfound supernatural abilities. He does _not_ want to see the look on Dad’s face when he puts it together, Mom, and Stiles waking up screaming. He doesn’t want Dad to apologize, doesn’t want Dad to worry, doesn’t want him to drink more, doesn’t want him to cry. He doesn’t want to make Dad look any older than he already does.

Dad’s disappointed, every time Stiles lies to him. Stiles can see it, and it hurts -- it hurts an unbelievable amount -- but it’s still better. It’s still so much better than the alternative.

#

Friday night, Stiles flees dinner before Dad can start asking him uncomfortable questions about dreams or medication. He does his homework as best as he can -- his paper for Coach’s class might be even more off topic than usual -- and eventually falls asleep in bed. Because his life continues to be terrible, Stiles wakes up in a hospital.

There are signs that point to different departments – CT, PHARMACY, ICU, L&D – but he ignores them all in favor of the one pointing towards the MORGUE. Erica told Stiles once that’s where Derek wheeled her when he proposed the Bite in a Big, Bad, Sexy Wolf kind of way -- like that isn’t the most legitimately fucked up thing in the world to do, like that’s totally normal and acceptable behavior. Stiles is not exactly the pinnacle of normal and acceptable behavior himself, and even HE knows how totally wrong that is.

But hey, Derek went away for a little while and came back a better, more mature person, right? Maybe personal growth is contagious. Stiles wonders if Derek’s tired too. He wonders what the hell Kate has been doing to him for the past couple of weeks. 

Anyway, morgue. It seems like a good place to start. Better than Labor & Delivery, anyway.

There are dozens of doors inside the morgue. Some look like the normal, square refrigerator doors you might expect in a place that stores dead people. Others look like, well. Everything else. Stiles ignores the first several and walks straight up to a door that is extremely tall and warm to the touch, a door that feels somehow alive under his fingers. Thump-thump-thump, like someone’s heart is beating just on the opposite side of the wood.

It feels both intimate and creepy, so Stiles backs off a few steps. When he looks at the door again . . . yup. It was definitely formed from the Nemeton.

Stiles sighs and steps forward. He tries the handle, just to try it, but of course it doesn’t open. There’s no lock in which to pick, no secret panel in which to find. The door with the secret panel had led to Deputy Parrish, who Stiles initially liked and now doesn’t trust at all, considering that without any kind of deep personal connection, Deaton said Stiles would be most drawn to supernatural creatures. Of course, Stiles is mostly friends with supernatural creatures, so that’s not necessarily a negative, just. A lot of supernatural creatures try to kill him, too. On the upside, Parrish’s dream was almost insanely boring, so maybe he’s just, like, a cute werebunny. Bunnies are cute, if they aren’t, like, Monty Python bunnies. Right?

“Focus, Stiles,” Stiles tells himself. Possible Werebunny Deputy Parrish is tomorrow’s problem. Today’s: the creepy, pulsating, Nemeton door.

Stiles stares at the door. He’s got nothing. 

“Open sesame?” he tries hopefully. 

The door just stands there, as unamused as an inanimate object can possibly be. It has to be Derek’s door. It just HAS TO.

Stiles tries kicking down the door. He tries breaking the door handle. He tries, against his better instincts, attacking it with both a fire axe AND dynamite. (Both fail spectacularly, although it’s now very smoky in the Dream Morgue, and he has big slivers of wood in his hair.) He asks the door to open extremely politely and then a little less politely. He even tries squeezing through the crack at the bottom of the door, like he’s Mr. Fantastic or something.

Spoiler Alert: he’s not Mr. Fantastic.

“Come ON,” Stiles says, slapping the door with an open palm, which mostly just hurts his hand. “Do I have to howl?”

He howls. It’s pretty bad. Not quite Scott’s first dying cat howl, but. It’s not good. The door, continuously unimpressed, does not budge.

“Oh, for the love of -- _abre_. Alberolingarn. _MELLON_.”

The door swings open.

“Seriously? That’s . . . “ Well. Disappointing, is what it is, because there’s simply no way Derek is some closeted Lord Of The Rings nerd. That would be too fantastic, and Stiles just doesn’t have that kind of luck. But he’s hardly about to turn away now, not after working so hard to get in here. It occurs to him, this could be Kira’s door. Or maybe Noshiko’s – she has a connection to the Nemeton, after all, and hey, maybe Kira inherited her awesome taste in books from her mother.

Noshiko still kind of scares Stiles, and he figures there’s about a 98% chance he’s not going to like what he finds in her mind, but he has to know. He needs to know.

Stiles steps through the door.

#

He walks into a kitchen, one he’s never seen before. It’s large and cheerful, painted in complimentary shades of red and yellow. It’s also crowded. There are at least ten people in here, although Stiles only recognizes two of them, and one of them is dead.

“Jesus,” Stiles says to Derek. “I can't believe. You're a Lord of the Rings nerd."

Derek is sitting at the counter, hilariously eating some kind of colorful cereal. Well. It should be hilarious. Derek eating what suspiciously looks like Fruity Pebbles is an image he wants to savor, wants to get him through all the horrible, depressing, oh-god-something-is-trying-to-eat-me-again days. But Derek’s sitting next to Laura, very thankfully in one piece, which means that all of these other people . . . they have to be the Hales, right? Which means that everyone in this room is dead, and yeah. That’s kind of a downer.

Derek’s staring at him. The smile slips from his face.

“Stiles, what are you doing h -- “

He cuts off as a wolf walks into the kitchen. Without warning, the wolf shifts into a beautiful woman. A beautiful, very naked woman, who’s currently smiling at Stiles with one perfectly raised eyebrow. 

Holy. GOD. Stiles quickly looks down at the floor.

“Of course, it’s fine if you want to have friends over, Derek,” the woman says calmly. “But it’s really better if you warn everybody first.” She walks over to the pantry door, pulls out a white robe -- because sure, Stiles know HE always keeps his bathrobe next to the Ritz crackers -- and casually slips into it. 

She smiles at Stiles again. “I hope you already knew about werewolves. Otherwise, this is going to be a very awkward breakfast.”

“Oh yeah, I did, I mean, I do,” Stiles says. “Mrs. . . uh . . . Hale?”

“Talia,” Talia says, extending a hand, and holy shit, Stiles is meeting Derek’s dead mother.

He shakes her hand. As soon as he does, her eyes glow red. She’s still smiling, which somehow makes it all the more disturbing. “Do you like waffles?”

“Uh. Sure?”

“Excellent. I make an amazing waffle.” She walks over to Derek and whispers something into his ear. Stiles can’t hear what she says, but he figures out the gist when Derek nearly knocks over his bowl of cereal and says, “Mom! I don’t want to _bite_ him! He’d be a terrible werewolf.”

“Gee, thanks,” Stiles says sarcastically, even though he kind of agrees. Unless the bite makes his ADHD go away, heightened senses seem like a pretty terrible idea.

“I didn’t invite him,” Derek continues because, even in dreams, he apparently hates Stiles. “I don’t know why he’s here.”

“Trouble,” Stiles says, which isn’t a lie. “Can we talk outside?” Not that he doesn’t want to eat a waffle -- because, actually, that sounds kind of awesome, and he sort of wants to talk to Laura and Talia, too, see what they were like, or what Derek thinks they were like, anyway -- but that’s a little morbid and not why he’s here, and he thinks this talk might go a little better without telling everyone in the room they aren’t real.

But Derek just shakes his head, confused. “You aren’t supposed to be here. You don’t -- you don’t belong here. You -- ”

And then this look comes over his face, and it’s . . . it’s _horrible_ , open and vulnerable and hurt. He looks at everyone in the room, at his mother and the children playing near the table and Laura, sitting right beside him. “You’re dead,” he tells Laura.

“And whose fault is that?” Laura asks.

Then she disappears.

Derek reaches out, like he can grab her and pull her back. The anguish on his face is just, it’s worse than when Boyd died, so much worse, and Stiles doesn’t want to see it there, doesn’t want to associate it with the guy who likes to slam him into walls and steering wheels and every other available hard surface or object. 

“Derek, you’re dreaming,” Stiles says, suddenly not caring what anyone else in the room has to say. “Okay? You’ve been kidnapped, and I need to know where she took you. Derek? Where did Kate take you?”

“Laura -- ”

“She’s not real!” Stiles says, which, kind of shitty, but Stiles is pretty sure he's about to run out of time. “Derek, look at me, man. None of this is real. You’re dreaming, okay? You -- "

“I’m not _dreaming_ ,” Derek snaps, like Stiles is stupid for even suggesting it, but then a kid disappears, and the short man standing in the corner. One by one, they all start blinking out of existence, as Derek desperately spins around, trying to catch them before they go.

“I’m not dreaming!” Derek yells. “I’m not dreaming! Mom -- ”

Talia reaches out for him, lunges, no longer calm. Their hands almost touch -- and then she disappears. Derek's eyes go blue -- 

\-- and Stiles wakes up, a howl still ringing in his ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a shorter chapter, I know. But hey, we finally found Derek! Sort of.


	5. Stuck

Scott comes over the next day, ostensibly to study, but really to check in on Stiles in the least subtle way possible. At least Stiles isn’t the only one being babied -- Scott’s taken to checking up on everyone in the McCall Pack of Lost Toys at least once a week. He’s taking the whole Alpha thing super seriously these days. 

He tells Scott he finally made contact, although he doesn’t give any real specifics, only that it didn’t work and that he’s going to try again tonight. Maybe even this afternoon, if he can get himself to take a nap. It’s doubtful, though. Stiles was never very good at the whole nap thing; he gets antsy. It’s too hard to sleep; there’s _so much else_ he could be doing. Plus, he always wakes up feeling awful. He doesn’t get how people feel good after naps.

“Seriously, do YOU like naps? Or, no, I bet werewolves don’t take naps. Not unless it’s in like a fur pile or somethi -- ooh, maybe, we should be doing, like, pack sleepovers. Would that be too weird? It’d be pretty weird, I guess, but SO worth it if I could, like, draw a dick on Derek’s face. Oh, don’t judge, it’d be hilarious, as long as he didn’t kill me, and you wouldn’t let him do that, would you Scotty? Hey, if I figure out where Derek is tonight -- ” 

“Maybe you should take a break,” Scott interrupts carefully.

Stiles rolls his eyes, exasperated. “Dude, Deaton, remember? I literally _can’t_ take a -- hey, do you see my history book? I swear, I just -- oh, HERE it is.” Stiles fishes the book out from halfway under the couch and flips it open to the test questions they’re supposed to be going over. “So, Korean War, huh? I wonder if I should start boning up on my Korean mythology.”

Scott looks confused, and Stiles rolls his eyes. “Dude, haven’t you noticed? There’s this whole weird thing with our schoolwork. It is intensely thematic with whatever monster of the week is loose in Beacon Hills. Come on, you HAVE to have noticed this. When do we read Heart of Darkness? Right before we have darkness permanently encircling our hearts, thanks to a magical tree, and can I just say? Fuck that tree. Seriously. And when does an evil Japanese spirit take over my brain? When we’re learning about Japanese internment camps that, hey, just happen to be a crucial piece of backstory? Our lives, man. We’re basically living Buffy episodes, and that makes me Xander, which sucks, because, you know, everyone _likes_ Xander, but no one really wants to _be_ him, right?”

Scott’s still staring at him with his Confused and Vaguely Concerned Eyes -- which unfortunately don’t change colors, so they aren’t nearly as cool as his Alpha Eyes. So long as they aren’t blue, though. Stiles hopes Scott never has blue eyes. He isn’t sure his buddy could deal, knowing what it’s like to kill someone.

Stiles doesn’t want to be a werewolf, now more than ever, but sometimes he wishes his eyes were blue, that there was a warning on his face all the time. _I’m dangerous. I killed people. You can’t trust a trickster like me_.

Probably not a good idea to think about that now. More important matters at hand, like passing History, or saving Derek and his own Killer Blue Eyes. Right. “Anyway, even if I _could_ take a break, rescuing Derek is kind of, like, the priority, right? Who knows how long Kate is going to keep him alive, or what she’s even doing to him, and if my dreams are providing the only lead on finding him, then I’ve got to -- seriously, dude, with the staring. Do I have onion rings in my teeth are something? What’s up with the whole judgmental look?”

“Stiles, when was the last time you actually _took_ your Adderall?”

Stiles shrugs and looks back down at the test questions. “Okay, I don’t know the answer to, like, any of these. Did we actually cover this in class? Your girlfriend’s dad isn’t just screwing with us, right?”

“Stiles.”

“Oh, come on, Scott. I’m not _not_ taking it. I’m just cutting back a bit, that’s all.”

Scott raises both eyebrows and silently gestures to Stiles’s tapping fingers and bouncing leg and then the whole living room in general. About half of it is clean, like, super, ridiculously clean, like you could lick the floor and be totally germ-free clean -- and the other half is basically a disaster. Cleaning gets kind of boring, after a while, so Stiles abandoned it to focus on reorganizing the DVDs and Blu-Rays by genre, which are now in various toppling stacks around the messier half of the room. It was a bigger project than he initially anticipated -- all of the werewolf movies, obviously, had to be placed in the documentary section, and he has a _lot_ of werewolf movies: An American Werewolf in London, An American Werewolf in Paris, Ginger Snaps, Dog Soldiers, The Howling I, II, and III -- and wow, is III bad, he got it at a bargain bin for less than a dollar, and he clearly paid too much for it. It’s called _The Marsupials_ , for God’s sake --

“Stiles, how _much_ are you cutting back?”

“Dude, it’s fine.” It’s kind of not. Stiles isn’t dumb -- he knows that his attention is skittering too much, that he’s losing focus even faster than normal, that he takes his meds for a fucking reason, but it’s the best solution he’s got, so. Whatever. “Look, I’ll go back to my normal schedule when we find Derek, okay? It’s just sometimes they make it hard to sleep. And it’s already pretty hard to sleep, and I just. I’ve gotta sleep, Scott.”

“Okay,” Scott says, slowly and all earnest. “But dude, for someone who's sleeping a lot, you’re looking pretty tired. And your dad’s worried about you. He -- ”

“You talked to Dad about me?” Stiles sits up abruptly and promptly manages to knock his history book off the table, which, for him, is pretty good. After all, he’s still sitting on the couch. “What did you say to him? Scott? What did you tell him?”

“Don’t you think he should know?”

Stiles feels like his lungs are collapsing, which, no. No, he is not doing the panic attack thing today. “Scott, I swear to God -- ”

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Scott says quietly. “But I really think you should.”

Stiles takes a deep breath, then another, and shoves his shaking hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “Well, thanks,” he says. “I’ll definitely take that under advisement.” He looks at his history book, but the whole idea of sitting still and doing NOTHING is just -- nope, not happening, he needs to be up, he needs to be _moving_.

He gets up and paces around aimlessly for a minute before his eyes catch on the movie stacks. Then he walks over and kneels beside them, looking from one pile to the next. His classification system is too broad. There are too many subsets of horror, too many types of terrifying monsters who can kill you in too many types of terrifying ways. It’s surprising there aren’t more movies about evil druids. Banshee movies, too. And kitsunes, nogitsunes -- where are the movies warning kids about fox spirits? Because foxes, man, they’re a hell of a lot scarier than wolves.

He hears Scott shift against the couch. “I thought you didn’t want to lie your dad anymore.”

Stiles inhales, taps his fingers against Let Me In. Closes his eyes.

“I don’t,” he says. “But I can’t give him something else to worry about, not so soon after -- after everything.” He tosses the movie behind him -- vampires don’t belong in the documentary section, at least, not yet -- and tries not to feel claustrophobic, boxed in. “I can’t do it, Scott, I can’t. He already has so much on his plate. You don’t know, it would overwhelm him, I can’t do that to him, I can’t -- ”

“Hey.” Scott’s beside him in a second -- werewolf speed totally comes in handy, sometimes -- and has one arm around his shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay.”

It’s not, but Stiles nods anyway. Tries to breathe.

Scott lets go of him, eventually, though he doesn’t move away. “You want some help with all this?”

Stiles nods, a little shaky, and picks up the original Godzilla. 

“What do you think?” he asks. “Close enough to a kanima to count as non-fiction?”

#

When he goes to bed that night, Stiles can’t find Derek’s doorway, which probably means that Derek isn’t asleep yet. Inconvenient to the last, that’s their sourwolf.

Stiles considers just walking around until Derek’s door shows up, but that gets boring, like, super fast, and several doors are calling his name tonight, shining a little brighter than normal, inviting him inside. Which is a dangerous way to think -- he knows what he’s doing is such a massive breach of privacy, but he also knows that he’ll never master this if he doesn’t experiment at least a little, and he’s always been an ‘ends justify the means’ kind of guy, and anyway, he’s curious. 

Which, yeah. Those are basically all the earmarks for eventually going Dark Side -- well, again -- but that’s what he has Scott for, right? Anyway, there’s a door at the end of the hallway, and it’s the first door that allows him to see inside, through a slim, vertical glass panel. It reminds him of a prison door. A hospital door.

He’s not surprised, when he peers inside and sees Malia.

She’s in four-point restraints, tied to a bed in Eichen House, and he can’t -- he can’t just leave her like that. No one deserves to be in that place, even if it isn’t real. Stiles knows more than anyone what it’s like to be trapped inside your own head.

Her door is tricky at first until Stiles realizes he’s overthinking it -- he needs to do what Malia would do. He needs to break the lock. Grinning, Stiles imagines his baseball bat and beats the crap out of the handle until it comes flying off. It’s kind of therapeutic. He pushes the door open with ease. 

“Hey,” he says, walking over and dropping the bat. “Let’s get you out of these, huh?”

She looks around as he works on undoing the soft cuffs around her wrists. “Brunski will be back soon,” she says, and then stares at him. “You need to get into the basement.”

Malia doesn’t always speak with the correct inflection, so it takes Stiles a minute to realize she’s asking a question, not stating a fact. “No,” he says. “I just came to get you out.”

“But that’s where you need to be. That’s where we were.” And the whole room suddenly changes around them, so fast that Stiles can’t even process it and gets a little dizzy when he tries. He’s just abruptly in the basement at Eichen House, sitting on the couch with Malia, who is no longer in restraints and seems untroubled by their newfound teleportation skills.

“That’s different,” Malia says, pointing.

Stiles turns his head and follows her when she gets up. The kanji on the wall has changed. It’s not even a real kanji anymore, just a bizarre series of squiggles. “What do you think it means?” he asks.

“Stuck.”

He turns to look back at her and smiles. “Maybe you should tell me more?”

She traces the lines with her fingers. “Two things, trapped in one body, fighting for the same space, for dominance.” Malia moves her hair to the side, and Stiles touches her bare shoulder. The same mark is on the back of her neck.

“You have it too,” she says, pulling at the collar of his T-shirt before he can protest. When he looks down, he can see the squiggles over his heart.

When he looks back up, Malia’s eyes are bright blue, and her teeth have shifted, grown sharper.

“I want to try something,” she says, and Stiles takes a breath --

“Well, isn’t this cute?”

They spin around. Brunski, the bastard, is coming down the staircase. He’s even bigger than normal, and he’s carrying an unreasonably large needle in one hand. There are even more needles hanging from his belt, like he’s the most horrifying version of Batman ever.

“Time for you both to go back to the Quiet Room,” Brunski says. “Maybe some Haldol will make you a little more cooperative.”

Stiles shakes his head and shoves his hands in his pockets. “You are the worst,” he says. “Seriously, who in their right mind would even hire you? Don’t you have to be sane to work at a mental asylum, or at least have, like, basic people skills?”

“All right, Little Man,” Brunski says, stepping close to him. “Looks like you just volunteered for the first needle.”

“Pass,” Stiles says and pulls a Taser from his pocket.

Zapping the shit out of Brunski turns out to be ENORMOUSLY satisfying.

Malia steals it out of his hand so she can zap Brunski too, even though he’s already on the ground and twitching. Eventually, Stiles takes it back from her, because he’s not sure he’s supposed to be encouraging unnecessary acts violence, even if it’s only, like, dream violence. He’s pretty sure Scott wouldn’t approve, anyway. 

There’s a door in the wall, near the new not-kanji. Stiles opens it, and it leads out into the woods. 

Malia stares at the trees with undisguised longing. “I don’t know if I belong there anymore,” she says, touching the back of her neck. “I don’t know where I belong.”

Stiles isn’t sure where he belongs, either.

“You belong wherever you want,” he tells her. “And anywhere’s better than Eichen House.”

Malia looks back at unconscious (or possibly dead) Brunski and nods. 

“Okay,” she says, and turns into a coyote. Before he can say anything, she runs for the trees without looking back. Stiles stares after her. 

“Well,” he says. “Okay, then. Have fun! Try not to eat too many rabbits!”

He does consider trying to follow her, wondering if he can shapeshift the way he can dream up tasers and baseball bats and lock picks, but killing cute dream forest animals is not really why he’s here and not actually all that appealing, honestly. Instead, he steps over Brunski’s body as he walks up the staircase. The door leading out of the basement is the same door that led to Malia’s mind. He can see the hallway through the glass slot.

He opens it, walks through -- and Malia is alone in her head again.

“Sweet dreams, Malia,” Stiles says, and goes to see if Derek has fallen asleep yet.

#

Derek has, in fact, fallen asleep. Stiles walks through his door, praying to God that he isn’t interrupting any dead family reunions this time.

He’s not. Derek’s actually just in his loft, cooking alone. It’s kind of nice, knowing that even werewolves have boring dreams sometimes.

Derek looks up at him. “What are you doing here?”

“One of these days, buddy, you’re going to be happy to see me.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Derek says, then grins his Asshole Grin. “On second thought, do.”

“You know, this, right here? THIS is the kind of behavior that tempts people to just let you rot. I hope you know that.”

“Stiles, what the hell are you talking about?”

Stiles opens his mouth -- and then closes it. It occurs to him, possibly a little late, that he never really bothered to come up with this portion of the plan. He _really_ doesn’t want a repeat performance of the meltdown that happened last time Derek realized he was dreaming, but at the same time, Stiles can’t exactly get any relevant information out of him without informing Derek that he’s not exactly where he thinks he is.

He desperately casts about for something to say, like, _Scott’s in danger_ , maybe, or _if you were a psychotic, back-from-the-dead werewolf-hunter, where would YOU hide the surly werewolves you abducted_. What actually comes out of his mouth: “I want my chessboard back.”

Well, he does. Derek didn’t return it before he went missing, and he didn’t think to look for it among all the old blood and bullet holes.

Derek rolls his eyes and points to the kitchen table with his spatula. There was nothing on the table when Stiles walked into the room. Now, his chessboard is there, the pieces exactly where the Nogitsune positioned them. 

Stiles swallows and walks over, quickly moving the pieces back to their starting positions. Derek has turned off the stove and come to stand in front of him. There’s a look on his face that’s -- Jesus, is that _sympathy_? 

All Derek says, though, is, “I tried to find you with this.”

Stiles nods. “Well, maybe . . . maybe this is how I can find you.”

Derek blinks at him. “I don’t think you have to look very hard.” That strange flash of concern comes over him again. It’s too weird seeing concern on Derek’s face, at least when that worry is about Stiles. “You know where you are, right?”

Stiles snorts. “Do you?”

Derek raises one perfect eyebrow, just like Talia had. “Pretty sure I’m right here, in my loft.”

“Pretty sure you’re not.” Stiles picks up a knight. “Look. This is you.”

“Stiles -- ”

“Shut up and listen. This is you, and this -- “ Stiles picks up the Queen. “This is Kate.”

Predictably, Derek growls. “Kate. She -- ”

“She kidnapped you. Well. You’re not really a kid, right, so she . . . adult-napped you? No, that sounds dumb -- ”

“Stiles!”

“She abducted you,” Stiles says, “and we couldn’t find you, so I -- “ He picks up the rook, which has always been his favorite piece. “I came into your mind, and I -- ”

“How?”

“How?”

“ _How_ did you come into my mind?”

“Long story,” Stiles says. “Suffice it to say that there are apparently _consequences_ to a fox spirit from hell hijacking your brain. Anyway, dude, I’m here, so, I really need you to remember where the hell Kate took you, so we can get to the rescuing, and I can get back to my proper Adderall dosage, okay?”

Derek frowns, but it's less of a ‘you’re-so-annoying-I-want-to-kill-you’ frown and more of a ‘trying-to-remember-what-the-hell-I-did-last-night’ frown. “She shot me,” he says slowly.

“Uh-huh,” Stiles says, trying and failing to not sound totally impatient. “That’s good, buddy, but I already got that. I need to know what happened _after_ you got shot.” Derek doesn’t say anything, and Stiles has to resist the urge to shake him. “Come on, Derek. Are you still in Beacon Hills? Are you somewhere in the Preserve? Can you howl so Scott can find you?”

Derek shakes his head. “I can’t, no. No, I can’t howl, there’s a -- she put a -- “ He frowns harder. “Why can’t I -- “

Stiles almost _does_ shake him then, and wraps his arms around his chest before he can. He’s terrified Derek’s going to wake up again and leave Stiles with nothing to go on. “Derek, _think_. Where would she take you?”

“She used to -- we used to -- “

He turns and walks to the window. With an exasperated sigh, Stiles follows him. Outside is a small cabin in the woods that absolutely does NOT belong outside Derek’s loft -- and then, like with the basement at Eichen House, Stiles and Derek are suddenly standing outside of the cabin. This time, the vertigo is stronger, and Stiles actually falls on his ass. Derek, the rat bastard, takes absolutely no notice.

“We used to come here, when we, when we were -- ”

Stiles climbs to his feet and is absolutely horrified to see that Derek’s eyes are a little wet. He doesn’t like this version of Derek, this one without the same emotional barriers. It feels wrong, to see him like this. It feels like a violation.

“It’s okay,” Stiles says quickly, before Derek can stumble through a confession. “I know about you and Kate.” He figured it out a while ago and feels a little bad, now, about throwing it in his face after Jennifer. (Although, really, if anyone needs a Psycho Girlfriend Meter, it’s clearly Derek Hale. There should be an app for that, or at least a magic ring or something.) “You couldn’t have known.”

Derek doesn’t acknowledge this, just roughly shoves past him and walks inside the house. “After she shot me, when I woke up, there was a bag over my head. I couldn’t see, but she walked me downstairs somewhere.”

“Does this place have a basement?” Stiles asks.

Derek nods and walks to a red door. He tries to open it, but the door is locked. “I never went down there,” he says. “Anything could be down there.”

“ _You_ could be down there,” Stiles says. “Dude, this is huge. This is actually a lead. This is AWESOME.”

Derek ignores him. “She really came back,” he says to himself.

“Yeah, while we’re on that subject -- HOW is she back again?” Lydia came up with the hypothesis that Peter’s claws turned Kate into a werewolf instead of killing her dead, and once she said it, Stiles remembered Derek actually telling him that in the locker room dream. He’s discovered that he only remembers the dreams with vivid clarity if he’s wearing his pendant; otherwise, they’re prone to fading away, just like normal dreams, albeit in someone else’s head.

Still. “I know it’s all magic, supernatural shit,” Stiles says, “but you’d think she’d bleed out before she could transform into a werewolf.”

“Werejaguar,” Derek corrects.

Stiles stares at him. “ _Why_?” he demands finally.

“Because sometimes the shape you take -- “

“Right,” Stiles says. “Some people are coyotes, some are jaguars, and some are venom spitting lizard monsters. God knows what I would have been if I _had_ tried to shapeshift with Malia -- “

“Silly rabbit,” someone says. “You’d be a fox, of course.”

Stiles startles and nearly falls over, he turns around so fast. 

“Kate,” Derek says.

Kate walks out of the shadows, an inappropriately sized shotgun in her arms. What is it with these dream bad guys and their ridiculously sized weapons? She’s smiling at Stiles, which is mildly disconcerting, to say the least. “Stiles. Derek has told me a lot about you.”

Stiles opens his mouth -- because he has something witty to say to that, really, he’s like four seconds from totally destroying Dream Kate with his devastating snark -- and Kate fires the shotgun straight into his chest. 

Stiles’s feet lift the ground, but he doesn’t feel himself land. He’s just on the floor, on his back, and his chest is completely torn apart. Everything’s red and wet. He can’t breathe, and he’s dying, oh God, he’s dying, and he didn’t talk to his dad today, he didn’t explain why he’s been lying to him, and Dad, Dad --

\-- but it’s not real. It’s not real. _Get it out of your head, Stiles. It’s just a dream. Wake up, Stiles_.

He doesn’t know how to wake up. It hurts so much. It’s so RED.

Derek is kneeling beside him, holding his hand. He looks impossibly young. “I’ll take your pain,” he says, and squeezes -- but nothing happens. The pain, it still all belongs to Stiles, and he doesn’t know if this is his nightmare or Derek’s, but he knows he’s coughing on his own blood, that he’s drowning in it.

He should be dead by now. Why isn’t he dead by now?

“This is what happens,” Kate says, mock-sadly, from somewhere else in the room. “This is what happens to the people you love, Derek. You’d think you’d learn by now.” And then it’s not just Stiles on the floor anymore. Laura is lying next to him in two pieces, and Erica and Boyd are curled against each other, and another pretty teenage girl on her side. Paige. It has to be Paige.

Derek’s actually crying now. He’s looking at Stiles and crying.

Stiles is crying, too.

“It’s not real,” Stiles tries to say, for both of them. “Don’t give up. We’re coming. We’re coming.”

And then he wakes up, choking on phantom blood.


	6. The Pack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, so this story is going to be one chapter longer than initially planned. But on the upside, save for some polishing, the story is FINALLY done and will hopefully be fully posted in the next week or two. (Never doing a WIP again when Teen Wolf is actually on. So many episode tag ideas I didn't have time to write.)

All right. He can do this. It’s only ten feet to the front door. If he can just --

“Stop.”

Crap.

Stiles spins around, deeply regretting not climbing out his window. He’d thought maybe that was overdoing it, crawling out a second story window just to avoid a Talk with his father, but now he realizes that he would have preferred falling out the window and breaking his _ass_ on the ground to facing Dad right now, Dad, who’s leaning against the wall with arms crossed over his chest, looking severely unimpressed with everything about this situation, especially his son.

“Hey, Pops,” Stiles says, smiling widely. “Daddio. Best father in the whole -- ”

“Shut up,” Dad says, pointing to the kitchen, “and sit down.”

Stiles sighs and goes to sit at the table. He’s bone tired, so exhausted that his head aches and his vision’s blurry -- which, yes, possibly means he shouldn’t be driving to school right now, but he has a history test to fail and a rescue plan to make and he’s not about to ask anyone else for a ride, least of all Scott, who would just give him Concerned Puppy Eyes and possibly a lecture and then probably manage to crash his bike with both of them on it because everything is terrible and continues to be terrible forever.

Dad pushes a cup of coffee in his face, and Stiles thanks him. Dad doesn’t respond to that at all, just drinks from his own cup and says, “I thought we were past all this. I thought you were done lying to me.”

Stiles groans. “Dad, I’m not -- ”

“You look like crap,” Dad says. “I know you haven’t been taking your Adderall, and your teachers all know it too, based on the three different phone calls I got last week about your recent behavior in class -- “

“Come on, Dad. Has my behavior ever been appropriate in class?” Dad stares at him. “Right. That’s not a helpful argument. Look -- “

“There’s a parent-teacher conference scheduled for Wednesday which you _will_ be attending. I’m pretty sure your English teacher wants to discuss any problems at home, and honestly, Stiles?” Dad throws up his hands. “I don’t know what to tell her.”

“I don’t -- “

“Your appetite’s decreased. Your nightmares have steadily increased. You’re wearing some kind of pendant under your shirt -- yes, Stiles, they did elect me Sheriff for a reason. I notice when my son starts wearing a strange pendant and never seems to take it off, not even when he sleeps. If it wasn’t for the necklace and the Adderall, I’d think you were just depressed -- “

“Dad, come on -- “

“And I’d completely understand that, with all that you’ve gone through, but even Scott’s lying to me now, telling me there’s nothing wrong with you, when he clearly thinks something is.”

“Scott just worries, Dad. It’s part of his whole Alpha thing, you know. I’m totally f -- “

“Stiles, if you tell me you’re fine, I will take the keys to your Jeep and shove them down the garbage disposal.”

Stiles makes a noise of outrage. “Okay, first? What do you think that’s going to do to the garbage disposal, huh? Nothing good, I can tell you that. You KNOW what will happen: you’ll try to fix it yourself, you’ll only make everything worse, and then you’ll be forced to call a plumber. Look at me, Dad. We do not want another reoccurrence of the Shame of 2010.”

“Stiles,” Dad says, leaning forward. “Tell me what’s going -- ”

“ _Nothing_!” Stiles says. Kind of yells, actually, pushing up from the table so violently that his coffee cup tips over the edge and smashes on the floor. Dad blinks at him, clearly startled, although he can’t be anywhere near as shocked as Stiles. 

“I . . .” He looks at the ground and then hastily kneels down to clean up the porcelain shards. “Sorry, Dad, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to -- you don’t have to worry about me.”

Dad kneels in front of him, placing a dishtowel on the mess and reaching for Stiles’s shoulder. “Kid,” he says, “I’m always going to worry about you.”

Stiles is pretty sure he’s going to start crying.

“I have to go,” he says before that can happen, grabs his bag, and runs.

#

They have another Pack Meeting Lunch. Stiles stabs his stale cornbread -- they were out of tater tots -- and struggles to focus on the conversation instead of the 87 better ways he could have handled the conversation this morning. Like, he could’ve said there was a problem with his prescription, that he was having unusual side effects, or that he was worried about money with Dad already struggling to pay the Eichen House bills. He could have said he was having nightmares about the whole Nogitsune thing, that he was afraid of going Dark Side for reals this time, or -- or pretty much anything _other_ than yelling AT HIS DAD.

“Stiles?”

Right. With the focusing. He looks at Kira. “What?”

Kira frowns at him. “How did he seem? Derek?”

Stiles hesitates. _Traumatized beyond belief_ would be an accurate answer, but he doesn’t want to say that. “It’s kind of hard to tell?” he says instead. “I mean, he’s alive and all, but . . .” He thinks of the look in Derek’s eyes, when Stiles had promised that they would find him, and says, “I don’t know if he believes it, that we’re coming for him. That he’s gonna be rescued in time.” _Or at all_.

“Of course we’re coming,” Scott says. God bless him, he actually sounds distressed, like he’s completely forgotten that only a year ago they were barely on the same side and might _not_ have come for him. Stiles certainly wouldn’t have been advocating the plan. “Why wouldn’t we?”

Stiles shrugs. “Dude’s got issues,” he says, because, really, he’s always wanted an Understatement of the Century award. “And technically, I don’t know. IS Derek actually part of the pack? Don’t wolves have to officially acknowledge their Alpha, or something, like isn’t that a thing? Derek always refers to himself as a beta, but if he’s not part of a pack, he’s really an omega, right? Dude, pack dynamics make absolutely no sense to me, none. If -- ”

“I think I found the property Derek was talking about,” Lydia interrupts without so much as glancing at Stiles. “I spent an invigorating afternoon yesterday going through old records, and there’s a cabin matching Derek’s description in the northeast corner of the woods. It’s completely isolated, and it belongs to the Argents.”

“Sounds like a perfect place to hide a werewolf,” Scott says.

“Maybe,” Kira says. “But even if he's there, how do we get him out?”

“We kill them,” Malia says, and not in a particular in-door voice, either, like, it kind of puts Stiles’s terrible in-door voice to shame. Kira coughs loudly, and Stiles smiles and waves at the nearby freshmen who have turned to look at them.

“We really try not to kill people,” Scott tells Malia quietly.

“Plus, we have no idea how many of them there are,” Kira points out. Stiles wonders if the practical problem of killing evil werewolves worries her more than the moral one does. Cold-hearted pragmatism seems a little at odds with a girl who’s basically the definition of adorkable, but Kira is a kitsune, a trickster, and tricksters play by a different set of rules. Stiles should know. He’d made an excellent one.

“ _Silly rabbit. You’d be a fox, of course_.”

Stiles rubs his chest. It doesn’t hurt anymore, where Kate shot him, but he still remembers the pain entirely too vividly for his liking. He’s thought about it, and he’s come to the conclusion that guns are terrible things, and he’d like to avoid them for the rest of his life.

“Well, we can’t just sneak in,” Malia says. “She’ll hear us coming. Maybe not me, but definitely the rest of you.”

Right. Because coyotes tiptoe. Stiles rubs his chest again. He misses Allison suddenly. Her plans weren’t always much better than Scott’s, but it was good, having her at their back. Allison probably couldn’t have killed Kate, either, but only because they were related, not because Allison didn’t have killing in her. Stiles wonders if maybe they all do. Maybe even Scott.

One of Dad’s deputies once clapped Stiles on the shoulder and said, as patronizingly as possible, “High school’s gonna change you, kid.” Stiles would like nothing more than to punch him in his patronizing face now, but he can’t because that deputy’s dead. Killed by the kanima.

Stiles’s high school changed everyone, and maybe no one for the better.

“First we need to confirm that Kate _is_ at the cabin,” Lydia says. “And how many people she has with her.”

“Okay. I’ll -- ”

“Not you,” Lydia says to Scott. “Malia’s right. We need someone who can sneak.”

Malia nods. “I can do that.”

“Then, if Kate is there, we need to come up with some kind of distraction. Something to pull her attention away while we grab Derek.”

Stiles thinks about that. “I’ve got an idea,” he says.

Scott looks at him. “Is it a good idea?”

“Not really.”

“Are we all going to die?”

“Probably,” Stiles says.

“Okay, then.” And Scott shakes his head and smiles, a hint of that goofy sort of grin of his that hasn’t shown up much since Allison died. “What are we waiting for?”

#

Malia skips out on the rest of school to go spy on the cabin. Scott doesn’t like her going alone, but Malia, with her usual tact, tells him that anyone else who comes along is just going to get them killed, and anyway, she really doesn’t want to go to math. Stiles, who also isn’t a big fan of math lately, or schoolwork in general, tries to skip out on the rest of school too, since he DOES need to begin work on his Big Dangerous Distraction Plan, but Scott refuses to let him because he still thinks they’re all going to graduate high school and get into good colleges and not die horribly in the woods before senior year.

“You know, your whole never-ending optimism thing?” Stiles tells him. “More and more annoying by the day.” Then he (kind of sulkily) follows Scott to Economics, and one second he’s staring at his book, thinking, _Have to stay awake, have to stay awake_ , and the next he’s standing in the hallway of doors.

“Awesome,” Stiles says. “Good job, brain.”

He looks around. He appears to be in a haunted house, and not even a real haunted house with actual ghosts -- the cobwebs are fake, the blood is paint, and he can actually see the fog machine nestled in a corner. Also, there are strobe lights. There’s no way he’s waking up from this without a headache.

What he needs to do is wake up before Coach, Scott, or anyone else notices that he’s fallen asleep. Unfortunately, he hasn’t actually figured out how to do that yet. When Derek realized he was dreaming, he immediately started to wake up, but Stiles already knows he’s dreaming. It doesn’t snap the illusion. Everything is real to him here -- he can’t feel his body back in Coach’s class at all.

It’s easy to imagine that his body _isn’t_ in class, that he doesn’t have one anymore, that he could be trapped in this hallway forever, walking through constructed cobwebs and other people’s nightmares. It’s creepy as hell, so he tries not to think too much about it. 

He considers trying to scream himself awake, but he’s not sure if that would really work -- he’s pretty sure that he only woke up after the nightmare with Mom when his screams woke _Dad_ up. If they hadn’t, Stiles thinks he might’ve been trapped in the dream for a lot longer. And even if it _did_ work, Stiles would rather not wake up screaming in class if he can help it. People already stare at him enough. Thanks but no thanks.

These are his options: he can wait until someone in class wakes him up (not appealing), he can break into somebody’s mind and encourage them to wake up (interesting, though not exactly foolproof), or he can try to find his own door. Stiles isn’t exactly sure what would happen if he walked through his own door (if he even has a door in this place, although he has to, right, it has to be somewhere around here, hiding out of sight, just slightly ajar), but he thinks he _might_ just wake up. Or who knows, maybe he’d go crazy or die or something, but he wants to know now. He wants to know what his door looks like.

Stiles starts walking through the fake fog, examining the doors as best he can through the annoying strobe lights. He has absolutely no idea what door best represents him as a person, although it _does_ kind of sound like a bad personality test you might find on BuzzFeed. _Would you say you’re more vibrant and colorful, or do you prefer to blend in? Do you like to give off the appearance of being impenetrable, or are you a more inviting person_? What DOES a hyperactive pop culture nerd with a history of panic attacks and demonic possession use for a doorstop?

He sees Derek’s door before he can figure it out.

Stiles walks up to the door, hesitates. Derek’s unlikely to know anything more than he did two nights ago, so there’s really no practical reason to enter his mind. Stiles should probably keep looking for his own door, because that’s information that could actually be useful someday. And yeah, there’s the whole privacy thing too. He absolutely should not, should NOT, go into Derek’s mind.

“Mellon,” Stiles says and walks through, because he’s impulsive even on his best days when he actually takes his medication.

#

He finds Derek at the high school, following a trail of blood.

“You don’t have your bat,” Derek says when he sees Stiles, as if the absence of his trusty bat is somehow more inexplicable than Stiles just appearing out of nowhere.

“Don’t need it,” Stiles says easily. “I’m going to the movies. Wanna come with?”

Derek stares at him. “Are you _crazy_? The blood -- ”

“What blood?”

Derek looks back at the floor. The linoleum is clean, since Stiles is awesome and totally erased the blood with his brain. He’s definitely starting to get better at this. It’s kind of awesome, really, being in a world he has _some_ control over. Although he still wishes the exit doors were marked more clearly.

“Crisis is over, dude,” Stiles says. “We won. Let’s go see a movie.”

“But -- “ Derek frowns at where the blood used to be and then looks up and frowns at Stiles instead. Suspiciously. Very suspiciously. “We don’t normally do that,” he says, and it’s half a statement, half a question.

“No,” Stiles agrees, “but we could start. I mean, unless you _want_ to go back to high school.”

Derek glances at the lockers around them, and his lip actually curls. It’s hysterical. “No,” he says and pushes forward, turning the corner so fast that Stiles actually has to run to catch up. The door that normally leads to the cafeteria leads to the movie theater instead, and they go in without paying for tickets or concessions. The bad thing about vivid, shared dreams is that when you got shot to death, it hurts like hell. The good thing is that the movie popcorn is free and tastes AMAZING.

To no one’s surprise at all, Derek picks the very back row of the theater. Stiles sits down next to him and shares his dream popcorn. There’s nobody else in the theater, which maybe should be kind of weird. Just Stiles and Derek Hale, watching a movie together. In Derek’s brain. Then again, Stiles got possessed, and the thing that possessed him vomited up Stiles instead of the other way around, so, all in all, maybe this isn’t the most bizarre thing that’s happened to him this year. Maybe not even this week.

Stiles knows he’s supposed to concentrate on waking up, but . . . now he just wants to watch Derek’s Dream Movie.

The movie is supposed to be some weird thing called Space Destroyer, but it’s actually a compilation of different films, absolutely none of them having to do with space. Following the plot is completely impossible, since the actors keep spontaneously changing and the dialogue makes almost zero sense. Stiles laughs through a scene where Aragorn and Arwen talk about werewolves, and Derek swats him on the back of the head. 

“Shut up,” Derek says. “I like this part.” 

Stiles does not shut up. “How did I not know you were a Tolkien nerd? Seriously, you should open with stuff like this. Like, ‘Hi, my name is Derek, and I’m a badass werewolf who likes to read books about elves. My favorite character is Gandalf. It’s very nice to meet you.’ If you did this instead of lurking in corners, glowering at people, I bet you’d meet way nicer girls.”

Which -- okay. That might not have been the most sensitive thing Stiles has ever said. Sensitivity is not one of Stiles’s strong suits. Thankfully, it’s not one of Derek’s, either, and he only gives a half-hearted glare before saying, “Gandalf isn’t my favorite.”

“Well, who is? It’s Aragorn, right? It has to be Aragorn.” Stiles nods decisively. “Tall, manly, broody . . . can’t imagine why you’d identify with him.”

Derek smiles -- he actually fucking SMILES, and not even like a ‘I’m going to kill you’ smile, but a ‘hey, you just said something funny’ smile, which, holy crap, this is something Stiles desperately wants to see in real life now. This is absolutely going to be his new project, after waking up and rescuing Derek’s ass.

On screen, Aragorn is now talking to Inigo Montoya, who turns out to _be_ a werewolf. This is, like, the best movie EVER.

“Why are you here?” Derek asks suddenly. “This is . . . it’s nice, but . . . you’re not supposed to be here, are you?”

Stiles falters. Derek turns away from the screen and stares at him. “ _Are_ you here?” Derek asks. “Sometimes, I think . . . I see people in the crowd sometimes, who aren’t there. My parents. My cousins. Laura. I see her the most.”

Stiles looks down at his popcorn. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I do that, too.”

“Your mother.” It’s not a question.

“There was . . . I see this homeless woman sometimes at the park. She’s almost always on this one bench, and she talks to herself about herself, and her hair, well. She’s homeless; a brush isn’t really her priority, you know, and when it started getting really bad, my mom, she stopped -- she’d forget to do a lot of stuff, say she’d already done it, lose track of things and, and people. By the end, she . . . I . . .”

He trails off, looks back at the movie. It’s raining now, and Inigo the Werewolf is walking through the Labyrinth with Sarah, trying to convince her of something. The actors' mouths are moving, but all Stiles can hear is rain. Then Sarah turns, and it’s not Jennifer Connelly anymore; it’s Mom, and she’s mouthing his name, his _real_ name.

“You feel responsible.”

Stiles doesn’t say anything for a while. This isn’t why he came here. He shouldn’t tell Derek this. But he wants . . . he wants . . . 

He doesn’t know what the hell he wants.

“I make people tired,” Stiles says. “Overwhelm them. Drive them crazy.”

“Do you think you drove her crazy?”

Stiles shakes his head immediately. “No,” he says. “I know I didn’t. She was sick. I didn’t cause that, couldn’t have changed it. I know that. I know -- ”

“It’s not about what you know,” Derek tells him, tapping his temple. “Not up here. _I_ know Kate used me, back then. I know I couldn’t have expected her to . . . do what she did. I know it wasn’t my fault.”

“But you still think it was?”

“Yes.”

“It wasn’t,” Stiles says. “Derek, I swear it wasn’t.”

Derek turns away from him. “The movie’s over.”

Stiles looks back at the screen. The credits are rolling. Scott’s apparently top billing, even though he didn’t actually appear in the movie. Also, Lady Gaga.

A movement out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. Derek is touching his own shirt, which is suddenly red in too many places. Stiles wonders if the injuries are real, if the reason Derek’s asleep in the middle of the day is because he passed out. He wonders how much time they have left to save him.

Stiles impulsively grabs Derek’s arm. He knocks over the popcorn doing it, but whatever, they’re having a moment. “You wanted to know why I’m here?” Stiles says. “I’m here to remind you. We’re coming. We’re coming tonight. Try to remember, okay?”

Derek raises his eyebrows. Stiles thinks he’s trying for his usual vaguely superior indifference, but really, Derek just looks confused. “Why?”

“Because . . . because you’re pack. Never leave a wolf behind, right?”

“We’re not pack,” Derek says. “Not really.”

Stiles taps the side of Derek’s head. “You know that here?”

Derek takes his hand and moves it to just over his heart.

“Well, that’s because your heart’s stupid,” Stiles says, and Derek doesn’t just smile this time, he laughs; he actually _laughs_ , and leans forward a little, and then --

\-- and then Coach is screaming, “Stilinski!” and Stiles is waking up even as he’s falling out of his seat with everyone staring at him.

Typical. Just typical.


	7. Plan C

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Scott says for the third time in ten minutes. Stiles would punch him, but a, it would only hurt his hand, and b, he really needs to focus here.

“Scott, this is kind of delicate work.”

“That’s what I’m saying! Dude, you look like crap. Maybe you shouldn’t -- ”

Stiles doesn’t look up. “If you tell me I shouldn’t come tonight, dude, I’ll . . . “ 

He can’t come up with anything particularly clever, and he trails off, studying what’s in front of him. He knows what he’s doing. He remembers how to put all the pieces together, just like he remembers how to grip a sword and twist. He remembers all the best ways to hurt people, all the ways he can make them bleed.

He’s not sure how long he works for. He sort of loses track of time, which, it scares him now, when he does that, when he loses himself in whatever he’s doing and everything else fades into the background around him -- what else might he have done, when no one is watching?

But Scott’s here, Scott’s watching, and he would know if the Nogitsune was back. He won’t let the trickster trick him again. Stiles is safe, as long as Scott’s here.

Stiles leans back as soon as he’s finished. His hands begin to tremble -- from exhaustion, or anxiety, or from keeping them steady long enough to complete the job. He curls his shaking fingers into fists and shoves them in his pockets.

“No lies,” Scott says, watching him. “How are you really doing?”

Stiles opens his mouth . . . and then just shakes his head, because really, he has no idea how to answer that anymore. “I yelled at my dad,” he says finally. Not like he’s _never_ yelled at his dad before, not like they don’t argue, but . . . they don’t argue very much, not since the first year after Mom died.

It’s not supposed to be like this anymore.

“He’ll forgive you,” Scott says easily. “You know that.”

“Yeah. I do, just . . .”

“Just what?”

Stiles isn’t sure how to answer that, either. He looks over the table. The wolfsbane, the mountain ash, and the mistletoe are from Deaton. The nails and the screws are from Scott’s garage.

It’s so, so easy to hurt people.

Scott’s hand is on his shoulder. “Stiles -- ”

But Stiles feels his phone vibrate, and he pulls it out of his pocket. “Malia,” he says, reading the text. “Looks like Kate’s definitely at the cabin. Along with about six of her new, heavily armed buddies. Well, isn’t that awesome.”

“Stiles -- ” Scott tries again.

But there isn’t time for that now. Stiles puts his phone away. 

“Time to see how the girls are doing with their firebombs,” he says. “We’ve got a sourwolf to save.”

#

The plan isn’t much of a plan. They usually aren’t.

Scott, Kira, and Lydia are Team Door Knock. Or Team Welcome Wagon. Or Team Big Bad Wolf -- Stiles likes that one because, well, blow your house down -- plus, Scott -- but Kira says that a team name should reflect everyone on the team, not just the leader, or else the Justice League would be called Team Superman. Stiles concedes the point, but then immediately launches into an argument on whether the JL should be Superman’s team or Batman’s team, and they’re having a really good time debating it until Lydia, finishing with the last of the firebombs, says, “We understand: you’re both nerds. Can we go back to rescuing Derek now?”

Someday, Stiles hopes that he and Kira can team up together to save all the non-nerds. They can be Team Geekpower, maybe, or Team Foxes. Past and present foxes included, of course.

Stiles and Malia are Team Eichen, obviously. They split off from the others in the woods, and Stiles lays out the groundwork for a few things in case everything (inevitably) goes wrong. Then they creep as close to the cabin as they dare, Malia glaring at him whenever he steps on a leaf or a branch or breathes too loudly, _sorry, Malia, I’ll try not to BREATHE anymore_.

Once they’re in position, Stiles texts Scott. _Team Eichen ready. Team Awesome Diversion, a go_?

Scott howls in response. Next time, Stiles wants to be on the team that doesn’t have to be sneaky.

There are shouts and screams as the cabin catches fire and Team Awesome Diversion launches an assault. That’s Team Eichen’s cue to sneak as quietly and quickly as they can to the cellar door, where Malia easily breaks the lock.

If everything goes according to plan, they’ll find Derek and get the hell out of there, all while Kate and her merry band of psychos are distracted by a sword-wielding kitsune, a fire-bombing banshee, and a pissed off Alpha werewolf. (Scott hides it well, but Stiles still sees it sometimes, a possessive sort of rage -- _my_ people, _my_ pack. It continues to make him wonder, how far Scott will go, how far Stiles is willing to _let_ Scott go, in order to protect the pack.)

Malia will help Stiles get Derek to the Jeep, and once they’re in the clear, she’ll text Scott. Team Awesome Diversion will retreat, Malia will pick them up in Lydia’s car (and hopefully not crash it – Lydia will _not_ be pleased) and everyone will hightail it out of there, alive and unharmed. Even Kate, presumably, although Scott’s probably the only one who wants that. Personally, Stiles would be relieved as hell if Kate were dead, and he thinks the others would be, too. 

He just doesn’t want Scott to be the one to do it.

That’s Plan A. They also have a Plan B and a Plan C, but Stiles really hopes he doesn’t have to go with either of those, since they’re even worse plans, and will probably lead to Plan D: die quickly, so it hurts less.

The cellar is cold and dark and predictably horrible. Derek is hanging from the wall in chains. He’s naked from the waist up and bleeding in at least half a dozen places. There’s also a solid metal mask clamped over the lower of half of his face, which explains why Derek couldn’t howl -- he can’t even breathe, not through his mouth, anyway. He _is_ breathing heavily through his nostrils, though. His pupils are ginormous, and tracking movement WAY too sluggishly. 

_Drugged_ , Stiles figures, as Malia starts breaking the chains around Derek’s wrist. Stiles looks closer at the wounds on his chest and notices that none of them show any signs of healing. Whatever weapon or tool they’re using, it’s probably been dipped in some kind of wolfsbane. Which is, well. Kind of worrying.

Doesn’t matter. Deaton will know what to do. Deaton will fix him -- they just need to get him OUT.

“Hey,” Stiles whispers. “Told you we were coming.”

Derek’s eyes widen a bit at that. He squints at Stiles, as Malia breaks the last of the chains and rips the mask off his face. Derek doesn’t even look at her. “You -- it wasn’t just a dr -- “

“Nope.”

“But -- ”

“Dude, we’ll talk about it later. Operation Let’s Get the Fuck Out of Here has officially commenced.”

Stiles can hear the sounds of growling and banging from upstairs, can smell the smoke that, thankfully, Derek’s too out of it to notice. (Derek actually seems surprisingly okay with fire, most of the time, but Stiles isn’t sure that would stretch to hanging out in a building that was actively burning down. Stiles isn’t okay with it, and he doesn’t know _anyone_ who died in a fire.) 

They get out of the cellar and are about halfway to the Jeep when Stiles thinks, for like half a second, that Plan A is going to work out, after all. Maybe no one has to die today. Maybe everything is actually going to turn out just fine, for once.

And then, because the mighty power of jinx --

“Just where do you think you’re going with my favorite pet?”

Stiles swears creatively and turns around.

He’s seen pictures of Kate, and he’s met Derek’s shotgun-happy dream version of her, but he wasn’t around for any of the awkward Argent family dinners, and she died -- supposedly -- before he got to Derek’s old house, so they’ve never really faced each other one on one, not in real life. Still, he recognizes her immediately, even though her face appears to be blue. Which, what?

“That’s weird, right?” he asks Malia. “Jaguars aren’t blue in any variety, are they? Like, there’s no blue Brazilian jaguar that I’m unaware of?”

Malia just looks at him. In retrospect, she probably doesn’t know any more about jaguars than he does. Presumably less, actually, since there isn’t a huge jaguar population in Beacon Hills, and she wasn’t around for the yearly animal reports they made you do in elementary school. Or maybe she’s just judging Stiles because she thinks Plan B is stupid. Nobody had been a big fan of Plan B -- and even less of Plan C -- but, well. It’s basically all they’ve got now.

Stiles lets go of Derek and casually steps to the side, carefully putting his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. Malia grunts a little at taking Derek’s weight alone, but she keeps him upright because she’s awesome. 

“So,” Stiles says, walking as he talks. “You’re Kate, huh? I guess I thought -- ”

“I’d be taller?” Kate asks, smirking, one eyebrow raised. The expression weirdly reminds him of Derek, and it makes Stiles briefly wonder if Kate could have been a halfway decent person, if Gerard Argent wasn’t such a psychopathic bastard.

“No,” Stiles says. “I thought you’d be crazier. Or look crazier, anyway -- obviously, you’re cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but you know, your eyes aren’t all bugged out, your clothes aren’t stained with the blood of the innocent. For a batshit insane person, you’re pretty normal looking.”

She seems amused by him, which isn’t exactly the reaction he’s going for, but she’s tracking his movements as he starts to circle around her instead of focusing on Derek. So, it’s a step in the right direction. 

“That’s funny,” Kate says. “But don’t you think you should get on home, Stiles? Your allegiance to your friends is all very touching, of course, but let’s be real here: you’re not going to be much help to them, are you? This is a dangerous time of night for humans, and all you’re really going to do is get them killed.”

He steps backwards, pretending to falter at the sight of her teeth. He may not have to pretend that hard. She seems to have a lot of them. “Oh, you’d be surprised by what I can do,” he says. “My juggling skills are fearsome.” This is a lie. Stiles has no juggling skills of any kind. “Also, I can pop culture reference like you wouldn’t believe. Werewolves pretty much tremble. I don’t know how werejaguars would fare but -- okay, I just can’t not address the werejaguar thing anymore. Did you always have an affinity for cats or something? How the hell are you a cat instead of a wolf?”

“I don’t know,” Kate says, shrugging. “And I don’t care, either. Last chance, Stiles. Run home to your father, or try to. Maybe you’ll even make it before I finish with Derek here.”

“Aaaaand we’re back to the crazy,” Stiles says, trying to ignore the sound of his heart, knocking around inside his chest. It doesn’t bother him, really, that Kate knows who he is, but he is absolutely one hundred percent not okay with her talking about his dad. He takes another step back, fingers involuntarily squeezing around the phone in his pocket. “Seriously, what is your deal with Derek, anyway? You get that you’re the one who screwed him over, right? Like, this can’t be a revenge thing. If you were torturing Peter, I’d totally get it. Hell, I might even help -- but with Derek, what? You just have a hard on for torturing the guy? He’s got great abs, I understand, but I don’t see how cutting them up does anything for anyone. Is this another symptom of the Argent family disease or something? Gerard had it; you have it. Skipped Chris, for the most part, although his wife seemed to have caught it just by marrying him. And Allison -- ”

Kate growls suddenly and steps towards him.

Which, interesting. Also terrifying, like, absolutely terrifying, but _absolutely_ the reaction Stiles was looking for. He needs Kate to follow him for either Plan B OR Plan C to work, and if he can needle Kate by using Allison’s death . . . he’ll do it.

Stiles remembers all the best ways to hurt people.

He takes another step back, keeping one hand firmly on the phone on his pocket, finger posed over the CALL button. He really hopes he doesn’t have to press it. “So. You actually did care about Allison. I wasn’t sure, you know, but I guess it makes sense. Even psychos have feelings. It’s good to know.”

“She was good,” Kate says. Her voice is rough, uneven, full of rage threatening to bubble over the surface. Stiles glances up at the moon just overhead. It’s not the full moon, not yet, but it’s close, and he wonders how much control Kate’s managed to master over the shift. He doesn’t think very much, not yet. “Getting caught up with your friends is what got her killed.”

“Actually,” Stiles says. “That was mostly me.”

“Stiles,” Derek says weakly, because he totally doesn’t understand the plan. Which, it’s not his fault, since he wasn’t there when Stiles made it, but still -- _shut the hell up, Derek_.

Thankfully, he doesn’t think Kate even heard Derek. She’s fully focused on Stiles now, advancing a little quicker than he’d actually like. He backpedals faster, right past Plan C, nestled at the bottom of a tree and disguised by the shadows and fallen leaves. Plan B, also disguised by shadows and fallen leaves, is maybe twenty, twenty-five feet behind him. It’s an almost complete circle of mountain ash that Stiles needs to lure Kate into. Then he just needs to get around her somehow, seal the circle, and Kate will be trapped.

Plan C is a bomb. It’s just like the one he -- the _Nogitsune_ \-- detonated at the police station, only it’s not on a timer. It’s phone activated. Also, the screws and nails and shards of metal have all been covered in obscene amounts of wolfsbane, mistletoe, and mountain ash.

After Plan C, he is officially out of ideas.

“You?” Kate asks.

“Oh yeah,” Stiles says. “Didn’t you do your homework? The Nogitsune possessed me. I let it in. A couple of times, actually. I even did it on purpose once.” He carefully doesn’t look at Malia and Derek when he says that; he left that part out, when he told Scott and the others what happened at Eichen House. “Of course, we were separated by the time Allison died, but it was still wearing my face when it took control of the Oni that killed her. And it would never have gotten the Oni if it hadn’t been for me. If someone had just killed me when the Nogitsune was still trapped inside.”

“Stiles,” Derek says, a little stronger this time.

“Then again,” Stiles says, eyes on Kate. “Maybe Allison just wasn’t good enough.”

Kate growls. Now she’s walking by the bomb, which is good -- if he detonates it now, she’ll get a face full of poisoned shrapnel. Unfortunately, he might too. He’s not sure if he’s out of range, although Malia and Derek are, so. That’s something, he guesses.

It’s still ten feet off to the circle of mountain ash. Maybe if runs -- but no, the second he turns his back, she’ll be on him --

“Maybe Allison wasn’t prepared enough,” Stiles says. “Maybe if _you’d_ been there to protect her. What do you think, Kate? Maybe it’s not my fault, after all.”

“You -- ”

“It’s good,” Stiles lies. “I think it’s good Allison’s dead. If she could see you like this -- ” 

What comes out of Kate is more of a scream than a howl, and she comes forward fast, too fast. There’s no time to run, no time for Plan B. Derek and Malia both call Stiles’s name, but he barely hears it.

His finger squeezes the SEND button, and the world explodes.

#

When he can see again, Stiles finds himself on his back. Everything is blurry and dark, and the back of his head feels wet. There’s a tree behind him, and he thinks that might be important, that it might have something to do with why everything is spinning and wrong.

It could also have something to do with his stomach, which is bleeding pretty profusely.

Derek and Malia are kneeling above him. They’re both saying something, but he can’t hear them. He can’t feel much of anything, which probably isn’t good. He doesn’t know where Kate is, but he can’t seem to get too worked up about it right now. It’s dark, and he’s tired, and he doesn’t really want to think anymore.

Derek and Malia, they might be saying his name. Not his real name, not what his mother used to call him, before she forgot his face and offered to help him find his way home, but the one he’s gone by since kindergarten, when his teacher managed to come up with whole new vowel sounds trying to pronounce his name. He thinks Derek and Malia sound scared. He thinks they might want him to stay awake.

Stiles closes his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go -- should be up either tomorrow or Wednesday.


	8. The Rook

Stiles wakes up in a white room, feeling like total crap. Everything seems . . . foggy and far away, and Melissa McCall is in her scrubs, staring down at him. So, hospital. Good thing he’s the pack detective, to put all the clues together like that.

“Hey,” Melissa says, super soft, like the sound of her voice might break him. That’s probably not a good sign. “How are you feeling, Stiles?”

He wants to say something snarky. He ends up asking for his dad instead.

“Right here,” Dad says. He moves into view and takes Stiles’s hand, squeezing it. It doesn’t quite feel real and, for some reason, Stiles starts to cry. Which, super embarrassing, but Dad just says, “It’s okay, kiddo. I’m right here. You go back to sleep.”

Stiles doesn’t want to sleep. He’s tired of sleeping. He’s tired of dreams. He’s tired . . .

“Shh. Close your eyes.”

Stiles does, and falls asleep before he can realize he’s not wearing his pendant.

#

The church is littered with torn out Bible pages and bloody crossbows. Stiles steps around them as best he can, leaving red footprints in his wake as he walks past empty pews. He’s walking towards the coffin, towards _her_ coffin -- and some part of him knows that this is wrong, that she should already be in the ground, that he already went to her funeral. And it wasn’t a church service, either; it was outdoors and beautiful, or as beautiful as something can be when you’re lowering a seventeen-year-old girl and a close friend into the earth. It’s wrong, and yet . . .

And yet it’s still undeniably Allison, lying still and dead in the open casket.

There are flowers in his hand. He puts them beside her, then leans forward and kisses Allison on the forehead. “ _Moushiwake arimasen_ ,” he whispers.

There are footsteps behind him. He doesn’t turn around and isn’t surprised when Kate shows up at his side. Her face isn’t blue anymore. Also, her neck is bleeding from where Peter clawed out her throat so long ago.

“She could have been a great hunter,” Kate says.

“She _was_ a great hunter,” Stiles says. “She was . . . “ But he doesn’t have words for all the things Allison was. Passionate. Funny. Gullible. Vengeful. Dedicated. Strong. A friend. _His_ friend.

But now, all she is is dead.

“Everyone,” Kate says suddenly. She’s clenching her fists, claws digging into her palms. _Pain keeps you human_ , Stiles thinks, but Kate’s not really human, and maybe he’s not, either. “I’ll kill everyone who did this. I’ll kill them, I’ll kill them _all_.”

“But everyone’s already dead,” Stiles says, turning to look at the empty pews. That’s why there are no other mourners here. Everyone is dead, and there’s no one left to blame. Except him -- he should have stopped it, he should have fought harder, he should have --

“There’s no one left to blame,” Stiles says, and tries to believe it.

“There is,” Kate says, and falls on her own claws.

#

When Stiles wakes up again, it’s daylight. Scott’s sitting in the hospital room with him, but Dad’s not -- which maybe kind of, sort of makes him panic until Scott says, “Hey, he’s okay. He just went home for a few hours. Mom kind of kicked him out.”

“Dude.” Stiles raises his eyebrows in pure admiration. “Your mom is so hardcore.”

Scott grins. “She totally is.” His smile fades, though, as he gets up from the chair and stands by Stiles’s bed. “How are you feeling?”

It’s a good question. Less fuzzy, for sure, but . . . yeah, still kind of fuzzy. The pain is there, but sort of distant, like it’s just waiting for him. Ominously. Also, he’s kind of dizzy, and since he isn’t actually moving, that’s probably bad. He isn’t going to question it, though. As long as he doesn’t have to get up to pee or something, he’ll be fine . . . 

Stiles thinks about that, for a second, and realizes that he won’t have to get up to pee anytime soon. Jesus. There is a tube, there is a TUBE. Up. His. _Dick_.

To distract himself from this horror, Stiles pushes his flimsy hospital gown around and pokes at the gauze wrapped around his abdomen until Scott gently slaps his hand away. “There was some shrapnel in your stomach,” he says. “But I guess it didn’t hit anything major, and they got all the screws out and stuff. They were actually way more worried about the concussion. And, well. The wolfsbane and mistletoe raised an eyebrow, since, you know. It’s _poison_.”

Stiles isn’t sure Scott’s aware of it yet, but sometimes -- just sometimes -- he makes this Unimpressed Face that is so completely reminiscent of Melissa McCall, it’s actually kind of frightening. He doesn’t want Scott to know he has this power, though, so he shrugs as nonchalantly as he can. “I’m not dying, am I?”

“That’s so not the point,” Scott says, continuing his impersonation of his mother.

“Uh. Dude, I think it kind of is.”

Scott tries to hold the glare, but he hasn’t quite mastered that trick yet, and eventually, he caves. “You’re on a ton of antibiotics, I guess, but they don’t seem too worried anymore. You were pretty lucky. Kate took the worst of it.”

Kate.

He doesn’t want to think of her, falling on her claws in grief. He doesn’t want to think of her as a real person at all.

“She’s still alive,” Stiles says. It’s not a question, and Scott looks at him curiously. Stiles rolls his eyes -- which kind of hurts, actually -- and lightly taps his temple. Then he feels for the pendant and, realizing it’s not there, starts frantically looking around the room for it.

“I’ve got it,” Scott says, patting his pocket. “And you can have it back when you’re out of the hospital.”

“But -- ”

“Dude. This is non-negotiable. Have you even taken it off since Deaton gave it to you?”

“Sure.” He totally hasn’t. Scott opens his mouth to argue, but Stiles suddenly cuts him off. “Holy shit, Scott -- Derek, Malia, are they -- and Lydia and Kira, they’re -- I can’t BELIEVE I didn’t -- ”

“They’re fine,” Scott says. “Everyone’s fine. It’s -- dude, stop. You tried to break your head on a tree. It makes sense if your brain’s still a little scrambled.”

“But they’re all -- ”

“They’re really all okay. Derek’s still healing, but Deaton says he’s going to be fine. You’re the one we were really worried about.”

“Right.” Stiles looks down, pokes at his bandages again. “Useless, breakable human.”

Scott smacks his hand away again, less gently this time.

“Hey! Wounded here!”

Scott shrugs, totally unrepentant.

Stiles glares, but it’s half-hearted. “What’s going to happen to her? Kate?”

Scott shakes his head. “She’s in a coma,” he says. “Deaton isn’t sure she’s going to wake up. Or if she’s, you know. Aware. Like Peter was.”

“No,” Stiles says. “No, she was dreaming.”

“About what?”

But Stiles doesn’t think he has the heart to tell him that. 

“So, what’s going to happen to her, uh . . . body? Because I’ve got to tell you, I don’t really want a comatose psychotic werejaguar as a roommate.”

Scott doesn’t push. He rarely does. “Miss Morell took her.”

Stiles raises an eyebrow. “I thought you _didn’t_ want to kill Kate?”

“She promised she wouldn’t,” Scott says, like that actually means something. “She said she had a place for people like Kate.”

“Well. That’s not ominous or anything.” A place for psychotic supernatural creatures, or just comatose ones? Is this like Arkham for the were-beast inclined? Stiles doesn’t ask, mostly because someone knocks on the hospital room door, startling the hell out of him. “Speaking of ominous,” he says. “Uh. Come in?”

Derek walks inside.

If Kate and Peter had walked in, holding hands and whispering sweet nothings to each other, Stiles could not have been more surprised. (Okay. Maybe that’s a BIT of an exaggeration, but still. Pretty freaking surprised.) Derek’s walking kind of stiffly, but his eyes are focused and alert. He’s also carrying a chessboard in his hands. Stiles’s chessboard.

“Just wanted to get this back to you,” Derek says, setting the board down on the bedside table. He smirks wide enough that it could _almost_ be considered an actual smile. “Rumor is, you’ve been missing it.”

Stiles stares at Derek, then the board, then back to Derek again. “Thanks,” he says, and then kind of just . . . stops. He has absolutely no idea what to say right now. It’s like . . . yeah, it’s just like what Monday must have been like for the kids in The Breakfast Club, only instead of detention, he and Derek shared several dreams where they exchanged deeply personal private traumas together. Stiles can’t be sure how much Derek even _remembers_. The chessboard, obviously, but . . . Talia? Laura? The movie theater?

Derek never says, “Thank you for totally saving my life,” and really, Stiles doesn’t expect him to. If they thanked each other every time one of them saved the other’s life, they’d never get anything done. Instead, Derek talks to Scott for a few minutes about stuff Stiles doesn’t fully pay attention to -- cause, okay, he is probably on some quality drugs here, and he doesn’t even _remember_ how long it’s been since he’s taken his Adderall -- and then Derek turns to Stiles and gruffly says, “Get better.” More like he’s impatiently ordering Stiles to stop wasting everybody’s time with his whole human healing process than anything like sympathy. And then Derek’s gone, out the door, presumably to go take off his shirt and brood at something. 

And if Stiles was hoping for something else, some kind of . . . acknowledgement . . . about what they shared, well. Whatever. It was dumb of him to expect anything from an emotionally constipated werewolf, anyway.

He opens his chessboard and is surprised to see a small white piece of paper tucked inside. He takes it out and unfolds it. Scott doesn’t peek over his shoulder, but he does tip his head curiously. “Is that a note? What’s it say?”

It only says one word.

_Eowyn_.

Stiles smiles, folds it back up, and doesn’t answer.

#

When Dad arrives, Stiles already has the chessboard set up. Dad ignores this to give him a hug that probably crushes all the bones in his body, then lectures at him for like an HOUR about not doing stupid things on his own anymore, that he’s not invincible, even if all his friends are supernatural creatures, how Dad’s here to protect Stiles, not the other way around, etc, etc, etc. Scott silently slips out during the middle of this tirade because he’s a traitorous bastard who abandons his friends in their hour of need.

“Okay,” Stiles interrupts, when it appears that Dad isn’t going to actually stop for breath anytime soon. “I get all that, but look -- ”

“You are going to start talking to me, Stiles. You’re going to start telling me the truth. If I have to keep you from seeing Scott -- ”

“It’s cute how you think that would work,” Stiles says, and then, before Dad can get anymore red in the face, “ _Dad_! Did you not notice the chessboard when you came in?” He gestures to it wildly and maybe knocks off six pieces. Whoops.

Dad sighs. “Kid,” he says, picking up the pawns. “Someday, you might try talking me through things without props.” But he pulls a chair over and finally sits down, which, good. All that standing up and yelling couldn’t have been doing anything good for his blood pressure. “So, let me guess: new player on the board?”

Stiles smiles, but can’t answer right away. He still doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t, but this thing with him, it’s not going away. He’s . . . he’s something else now, and he almost died without telling Dad that. Next time, he might not be so lucky. And there _will_ be a next time: Beacon Hills is a beacon for crazy and terrible. None of it’s going away.

Whatever his last words to his dad are, Stiles doesn’t want them to be a lie.

“Yeah,” he says finally. “There’s a new player on the board.” He takes a breath, then another, and picks up the rook.

“This is me,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's finally done! Thanks to everyone who's commented along the way -- I'm sorry I'm so behind in responding, but reading the encouragement you guys have sent has been very motivating in actually getting this finished.
> 
> I do actually have some ideas for a sequel -- everything I seem to write for Teen Wolf has sequel ideas -- but fair warning, it will probably be a while before I can get to them.


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